The women’s rights movement will be incomplete as long as both sexes don’t share their responsibilities as well
It doesn’t take a genius to know that the basic difference between man and woman is biological. The difference reflects itself in varying endocrynological combinations. This has a serious relationship with hormones and, therefore, is an influencing factor on behaviour, energy and approach.
It’s plausible to argue that to reduce this difference, there can be scientific social interventions. Behavioural interventions can also help the two genders cope with the influences of the endocrynological systems, better. This branch of study still has to be seriously taken to its logical conclusions. In the meanwhile, the pitch on woman’s position and rights has become increasingly shrill. There are many reasons for this.
As always discomforts are known. The analysis of the causative factors is well understood. It is the solutions which are widely debated. While teaching in the UK in the early 1970s in one of the high brow ‘red brick’ universities, I watched with bewilderment from my office window, groups of women parading the campus and shouting slogans. They were also throwing into air their undergarments. It was a part of an equal rights protest. I am not quite sure whether such demonstrations achieved anything but they were widely discussed.
We, in India, have witnessed such sights. We have never had salary differential between male and female employees. These are significant indicators. However, there are other problems. Perhaps the most encouraging sign is the utter sense of abhorrence with which the news of affronts to women’s dignity has been met.
But the problem is much larger than that. There is a global women’s movement. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women has seven women’s empowerment principles. It has also focused on the corporate sector. There is an attempt to get chief executive officers to sign a pact and agree to the guiding principles on business and human rights. Putting it simply, the UN Global Compact focuses on corporate sustainability of the respect and support for human rights.
The story however goes on. Excessive talk of rights creates its own problems. Witness the extension of the talk of fundamental rights in the Constitution of India. No one can or will contest the semenality of the fundamental rights. Yet, there can be no rights till there are duties. Somebody’s rights create a counterpart of duties.
We now have representatives from the civil society parading the streets with placards of various rights. Who will grant it to themIJ Once granted, who will enforce itIJ If enforced, how will the defaulters be punishedIJ And indeed who will punish if the judge himself is guiltyIJ The whole nation has become a huge platform for demanding rights.
Getting back to women’s issues, it is absurd to deny that women have rights but to imply that they don’t have any duties will be silly. People are not talking of it because politically it is all wrong.
There is a sunny side to the man-woman relationship. Femininity for millennia has basked in the male’s adoration. Indeed, a man’s adoration of femininty and his chivalry has been much celebrated. Between causing affront to a woman’s dignity and chivalry, there needs to be a reconciliation of the fundamental principles. The woman’s psyche has to be trained to constructively confront the affront. The male psyche has to be trained not to confuse adoration as an encumbrance.
Quite simply, mentoring at the early childhood/infancy stage is a small step in the direction of a solution. During several stages in the life-cycle, from infancy onwards, during adulthood, when one goes to work, there is a need for making the workplace recognise the biological, familial and social consequences of these differences. Women need not belong to the kitchen but somebody has to run the kitchen. The work place has to recognise that a father’s responsibility in parenthood is just as onerous as a mother’s responsibilities.
A holistic typology of female and male roles needs to be integrated into work patterns. Sloganeering in the name of women and leadership may perhaps only strengthen tokenism and be as good as far as it goes. Technology has enabled the present generation to re-write the man-woman and environment relationship.