The Dilemmas of Being a Thinking Woman in a Patriarchal World
As a
child, I would wake up on countless mornings desperately wishing I were born a
male, and to my everlasting shame, I finally admit to it. It is depressing that
someone so close to feminism, someone so rebellious is hollow from the inside,
a mere abyss. All my fight, my struggle, my strife for change is an outer
façade of helplessness.
Patriarchy is not limited to any country,
culture or society. Indeed it is more prevalent in some places, however it is
as global, or as local a practice as marriage itself. Funnily enough though
there are so many levels to it, that many extremely important aspects simply
get ignored as minor issues. While there are feminists advocating changes such
as dowry, people have almost forgotten that changing surnames to adopt that of
your husband is in itself a very patriarchal practice. Women, even well
educated ones, get married into households where their in laws are kind to
them, and feel they are extremely lucky, and have dodged the malfunct ways of
the world, yet they forget that the very fact that marrying and leaving your
parental house for that of another is not justified. But what is most
surprising is the viewpoint that even the most forward-looking people I have
met, have towards it. I have talked to various individuals, all very modernized
in all senses, who believe in working women, and equality of the sexes, and yet
find the practice of a woman marrying and going into the in-laws house as
completely justified. Maybe it’s simply a generation gap, and yet some people
even in this generation are more than happy with the way things are. If nothing
else, it says tons about a reified concept, a practice that has achieved its
current state after ages of internalization. To state it simply, even if we get
a small bit of what we rightfully deserve, we believe we are the luckiest. It’s
like a man who has been completely robbed blind, feeling ecstatic after finding
a penny out of his stolen earnings. Unbelievable as it may sound, the normal
discussions between teenage girls, among other things include how their parents
treat them, and whether they have any faith in them or not. While a girl
discusses how she has the ‘bestest parents in the world’ if they let her dress
by her choice, go out, and support her in whatever ambitions she may have, boys
take this as a very common place practice, believing its their parents “duty”
towards them. I am one such girl who has always been claiming to her peers
about how lucky I am, and how I have the most forward thinking parents, who
support me no matter what, and always respect my decisions at the end of the
day. If I still wish I had been born a man, one can only imagine the
disparity of the times we are living in.
This reminds me of the very famous work of
Virginia Woolf, who in one of her essays predicted what would have happened if
Shakespeare had had a sister, equally gifted and talented as he is. Her
conclusion was that she would have become a struggling artist, seen as a means
to an end, manipulated in life, and impoverished and unrecognized, died
anonymous. Well agreeably things have changed since then, and yet that could
still be the fate of very gifted woman, born in an unfortunately orthodox
household. I wouldn’t know how to label this apart from calling it double
standards, where people pretend to be progressive, and yet simply cannot part
with the most unreasonable practices passed down to them over several
generations.
How can one expect the world to view women
as equal to men, when women themselves lack such vision? And how do we expect a
woman to have such a vision when most steps in her life are towards finding the
perfect match, and while her husbands achievements are measure in salaries or
awards, hers are in her in laws praises? Why is a woman only praised for her
work, when she balances both her professional and personal life, but a man
showered with respect, when he manages a decent position in professional field
alone? I for one, being surrounded by all ‘forward thinking people’ living in
this pseudo intellectual society have not heard of one newly married woman
being praised except for her looks or her manners, or rather more appropriately
her ‘sanskar’. And this is where the dilemma of being a thinking woman steps
in. Maybe someone satisfied with a mediocre life, could settle in, and accept
the harsh reality, but how can someone with constant thoughts of these settle
in peacefully with such a life, knowing its nothing short of a crime to bow
down to such injustice? Sure there has been revolutionary change in the
position of women, just like there was when the slaves were freed from the
tentacles of the ‘white Aryan race’ but even after receiving freedom they were
continually perceived as, and sometimes still are seen as inferior, there is
not much difference in the way women are viewed by these shallow individuals
either, nothing more than a piece of property with the rights of ownership,
first to the father and then the husband.
And even when we evolve enough to surpass the crude views of ‘ownership
of women’, even when women cease to be seen as pieces of property, there will
be issues, currently seen as minor, yet in retrospect so important, because it
is these minor things, so deeply integrated into our lives, which ultimately
ensure the continuing cycle of patriarchy.
The saddest thing remains that this
practice is continuing today, not because of men, but because of women, who
instill such traditions into their daughters and daughters in law, who expect
to see women subordinated, who do not view girls as being equal to boys, who
follow the norms laid out by society without thought or question, who just continue
a mundane meaningless existence, and take out the bitterness of their
uneventful lives, and shattered dreams on other women, resenting the few
exceptions to the rule, and blaming the innocent. Till it becomes a normal part
of discussion, till its seeps into every aspect of our lives, till only one
gender is not required to give up their homes, their familial names, till both
are entrusted with equal amounts of faith, how can ever women be viewed as
equal to men? I plead, or rather beg women to be the change!
No comments:
Post a Comment