Oh womaniya !

Nikita Singh

In the past few decades, women have established a prominent position in all professional fields. We are everywhere! But has that really changed our personal lives, our place in the eyes of the men in the family?

I keep seeing these women trying to “have it all” which basically mean managing to have a career along with a family. A man does it easily, but a woman has to struggle — wake up before him to cook and come home early to prepare dinner. Why does the responsibility of cooking fall exclusively on women? In fact, not just cooking, but most household chores—cleaning, laundry, dishes — if they are not the ones doing it, they're supervising the maid. How can there be equality between a man and a woman if there isn't fair distribution of work?

I love cooking. It calms me down after a long day, it's something constructive and creative and at the end of it you get delicious food — basically there's no downside to it. When I get married I'll probably be the kind of wife who cooks all the time. But it won't be because I have to. Being told what to do and what not to do is the one thing that I cannot tolerate. It's high time we acknowledge that these "gender roles" that we have grown up seeing around us are skewed. Women want equality in relationships, which also means fair distribution of responsibilities, including taking care of children.

When a child achieves something appreciable, the father takes all the credit saying, "That's my son!" But the same father turns against his wife saying, "Look what your son has done," in a second when the child makes a mistake. The mother takes all the responsibility and no credit?

Recently I watched a few scenes from a TV serial my mom was watching. A new bride was asked to cook for her entire extended family (her husband smiling slyly because he conspired against her and did something to the food; he didn't want to marry her in the first place—but that's a different matter) while the rest of them sat, prepared to taste her food and judge her worth as a woman based on her cooking skills, passing comments on how they had made prophesies that she won't be an ideal bahu.

The other thing that irked me was that the rest of the bahus of the family stood behind their husbands at the dining table while they ate. It disgusted me. Why is it that in high-budget TV shows like this, such inequality is exhibited shamelessly and no one blinks an eye?

It's dolls vs fake guns all over again. Since childhood, girls were given these "feminine" toys while boys were given toys that signified more aggression and freedom. Are we still carrying that with us, still living in the predetermined space we were provided early on in life? We see women struggle with balancing work and home, and we see them complain about having to do all this household work along with handling their careers, but if given a chance, how many of these women would be completely fine with handing over the responsibility of cooking to their man, without feeling incompetent or uncaring?

I say this because women associate cooking food for their family with affection. But maybe once the transition is done, once they start sharing responsibilities, it wouldn't be as hard.

May be change is in the air. More and more TV shows are now about the girl child trying to break barriers and do what she wants to do. My mother used to watch that show about a married woman who wanted to become an IPS officer. There are shows about five daughters that have ambition and goals.

In relationships, Indian men tend to think that it's okay to boss women around, under the excuse of "caring" about them. Maybe they themselves do not realise that they are taking away power from her when they insist on walking her back every time. It feels great when someone cares about you enough to take care of you, but there's a difference between doing something out of affection and doing something to assert control.

It goes from protective to possessive to controlling in a second. "I only say this because I care about you: Don't go there. Don't stay out till late. Don't wear this. Don't talk to him, he's not a good guy." The list goes on.

The man expects his woman to keep his parents happy at all times, without showing the same kind of respect to her parents. Her parents gave away power when they started fawning over their damaadji to please him at every turn. A wife who loves her husband would try to please his parents, but is it wrong to expect the same from the husband?

Things are changing slowly. Men are opening their eyes to this inequality, and that is the only way to even things out. Women can keep demanding things and getting them, but until men themselves realise and initiate change, the road ahead is rocky.

— Nikita Singh is the author of After all this time