Women empowerment and women equality are two concepts which were discussed and tried to impose a lot during last 1-2 decades.
Women were made to believe that they are not living enough and had to work harder and on multiple chores at the same time.
They should do all what men are doing and obviously they can't do away with household chores they are assigned with socially.
There are lot of jargons which is being used by so called educated society even now.
for example:
"Isko to bete ki tarah paala hai" (I have brought her up like a son)
"beti hai lekin shouk saare ldkon waale hain" (She is my daughter but all hobbies are of boys.)
Not only that, boys are always made to feel that they are not for doing household work. Moment small boy goes inside kitchen picks up some dough while mom is rolling chapati,or shows interest in cleaning house with mom or elder daughter, comment will appear as :
"Isko to ladki paida hona chahiye tha" ( He should have born like a girl).
"hobbies iske ladkiyon jaise hain" (His hobbies are like girls)
Boys who hear these type of comments since childhood refrain themselves from doing any household work. They suffer a lot when they grow up and forced to live alone for their higher studies or job. Mom has done all the cleaning and arranging house and he got no clue how to do this. He can't cook anything himself and either forced to eat outside everyday or eat burnt chapati or half cooked rice if he tries cooking himself. At this point, he gets another enlightenment " I should get married now so that someone can do all this for me". While wife expects him to help in house chores, only best thing he can do in his free time is to sit in front of TV.
If we look around, world has changed so much. Girls has conquered invincible territories.They are now even in Army and Air force, entrepreneurs and leaders. Same time men turned out to be world best chefs, great mind in managing house and more productive in their house chores activity, stitching, drawing painting etc. They are raising flag high in all these fields.
Still a long way to go for a change in society thought process. Society has even tagged color with gender. Blue is for boys and pink is for girls. Heel shoes is for girls only. Making yourself look presentable is girl's activity. If we look into history, pink color was initially only for king dresses. Heel shoes were also designed for horse riding for boys.
When society tried to put clear line of boys and girls, new women empowerment and women equality added woos in women life. While women got to cover their assigned work, they also have to bite a part of boys designated work.
In recent times when requirement circle grew bigger and job uncertainty went up women started feeling that they should stand on their feet and give contribution in family budget an country's GDP, they went out looking for job.
All their little time left from office work is spent or better say drained in house work. There is high expectation during weekend on varieties of food everyone want to eat. They should also spend good time in teaching kids at home as we say "Mother is the first teacher". In few homes, husband try to take lot of housework to support them. Still God has created women in such a way that lot of work can be done only by them like having kids, feeding them and take care of them till certain age. No one can replace mother for such activities. These activities keep women busy 24x7. No holidays, no break.
They keep their dreams and hobbies aside with comment: "Family ke liye maine sab kurban kar diya" (I sacrificed all for family).
Those 4-5 days every month, designated by God for her to rest is also taken away by multiple pads in market. In history, they were sent to different room during that period and not allowed to enter in kitchen. That time was for them to take total rest.
So what's the solution:
When one member of family got good job to make the ends meet, another member can look into option to work on their hobby, passion and dreams.
Family food habits can be transformed in such a way that it turns to be more healthy and less effort in cooking. For example depending more on live food like fruits and uncooked vegetables, sprouts, soup and salad will reduce cooking time. It will be healthy as well.
Minimalism living style. Family can try to live in minimum required things at home and in life. Living with minimum gives you more time to do work you should focus on. Since it will reduce the requirement, we can also focus on what we like to work on then just working to earn money.
This article is written with the ideas shared with
Jinendra jain, Holistic healer
