Educated women Vs Gender role : The Distress Within
- Part 2 -

Nalini Nongmeikapam *

Ima Market - women exclusive market at Imphal

Blocking Out the Opportunities:

Women whose lives are mostly defined by their reproductive and familial responsibilities find themselves blocked out of many experiences; for example, the freedom of outdoors, a life of adventure, professions that require travel & mobility. Education and work enhance a woman's chances to travel, yet these chances are still limited for a majority of working women. Most of them live in the construed mind-set of a feminine role, which perhaps have not been wiped out completely through education, or have not been allowed to do so. They rarely think that they deserve these things. They suffer the guilt of being away from all the responsibilities. They are made to believe that any experience beyond the family and the larger kinship-network are not legitimate.

Thus, their only focus is on childcare, housework and kinship obligations, rendering her world limited and closed. The opposed pull of two motivations in women's personality: to become and be a person, making contribution to the society based on individual worth, and to become and be a women, matching conventions of feminity. A constant battle is being fought between these two sides, on one side - 'ideals of feminity' a nice girl, a devoted wife, a good mother and an imaginative and efficient housewife and on the other side - the urge to get recognition of her talent in her own career. The conflict within the women continues, intensifying the distress within.

The frustration remains and educated working women are still trapped within the system of patriarchy. A study by Gutek et al that appeared in Journal of Applied Psychology 'Rational vs Gender role explanations for work-family conflict' discusses the two conflicting frameworks. According to the rational view, conflict is related linearly to the total amount of time spent in paid and family work.

According to the gender role perspective, gender role expectations mute the relationship between hours expended and perceived work-family conflict, and gender interacts with number of hours worked and work-family conflict. The results generally support (1) the usefulness of separate indicators of work-family conflict and (2) aspects of both the rational view and the gender role view.

Question of Marriage:

Well educated women, is now more acceptable as a bride because of her potential for employment (if she has not been employed). The enactment of Dowry Prevention and Abolition Act do not seem to have much effect on the marriage market of educated women.

The new status of women has not eliminated the practice of dowry (in fact there seem to be a rising trend), permit inter-caste marriage or marriage by choice. Women in position, in most cases find it difficult to have compatible partners which match their status and land up marrying high ranking officers with a heavy price of dowry and also end up submerging their identity with that of her husband in many cases.

At the same time traditional expectations of maintaining family decorum from a daughter-in-law still continues. Marriage is a matter of individual choice. However, unmarried women are still considered a social taboo. Educated women, who remain unmarried out of personal choice or otherwise, despite being economically independent, continue to suffer from the social stigma.

Reproductive right:

Several questions arise: do women truly have a choice of their own? How much does a woman of today compromise on her reproductive rights? With the introduction of family planning policy and birth control, the concept of women as a child bearing machine and of children as god given has disappeared for a large segment of educated people and the right of women to decide the number of children is getting increasing recognition.

But this has not ended the encroachment on the reproductive right of women. The question of having a son and how it still affects relationships even to this day is appalling.

Indicating a continuing preference for boys in society, the child sex ratio in India has dropped to 914 females against 1,000 males - the lowest since Independence, as per the 2011 census, all this despite a slew of laws to prevent female foeticide and schemes to encourage families to have girl child; the ratio has declined from 927 females against 1,000 males in 2001 to 914, which was described as a "matter of grave concern" by Census Commissioner of India C Chandramauli. There are also instances of mothers-in-law planning the pregnancy time of the daughter-in-law against her wishes. So then the question remains unanswered: ARE ALLL EDUCATED WOMEN FREE FROM ALL THIS?

Are these women free from the shackles of the feminine social role inspite of being educated and economically independent?

A survey reported by The New York Times in 2009 noted that women who lost their jobs spend more time with their children, but the time spend by men in similar situations remain unchanged. The survey did however show that in families where both parents worked, the time women spend on childcare and household duties dropped, suggesting much of the work was outsourced. It was also predicted that the number of women in workforce may surpass that of men unless more manual labour and manufacturing jobs appear.

Many of the traditional expected from men are also becoming less emphasized in some modern culture. However it was acknowledged that despite more women working, men did not seem to contribute much more in the so-called feminine roles and women just seemed to be balancing both the jobs.

This being the scene in the far-more advanced ends of the world, we still have a long way to go as far as gender equity and reduction of bias is concerned. But the struggle is on and we must continue striving. Only when women are supported and empowered, all of society benefits and a nation grows.

Constitutionally and legally no barrier exists in women having equality with men; inspite of all this the long established norms of female inferiority and social prescriptions and prohibitions built around them have proved a hard nut to crack and as a result women still find it difficult to use the existing facilities to remove the hindrances towards equality.

This paper however incomplete it may be, is only an attempt to provide a critical context to enable us to understand and evaluate the choices we make as women and men, and to interpret and understand them. The question which comes up to my mind is - Are women victims of Patriarchal systems or are they partial collaborators? I am yet to give an answer to this question.

"Woman must not accept; she must challenge.
She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her;
she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger ~

(This article was presented as a seminar paper during the two-day UGC-sponsored National Seminar on 'Gender and Racial Discrimination: The Paradigm of Women's Vulnerability' organized by Human Rights Studies of S Kula Women's College, Nambol in collaboration with Women's Studies Centre, SKWC and Human Rights Alert, Imphal from September 7 to 8)

.... Concluded