By Sakhi Dayanand Gundeti
I grew up watching the women around me adjusting and sacrificing for their family members all the time. I’d seen them suppress their wishes and opinions to foster collective peace and happiness.
In India, we don’t make it easy for women to work towards their happiness. As if our biological misfortune(more on that later) wasn’t enough, there are social obstacles, too. Even if women conform to social norms and live their lives as per society’s standards, their peace and happiness are not guaranteed.
My mother and aunt had followed society’s template life of marrying at the right age, having kids at the right time, and serving their parents-in-law. They’d migrated from their hometowns to live in a stranger’s (their husband’s) house and slogged themselves in household chores everyday — everything as per social norms. The result?
During my summer vacations, my mother, uncle, aunt, and I would hang out in malls. As an avid reader, I was attracted to bookstores wherever I went and I’d drag the adults there too. While my uncle explored books on business and management, my aunt and mom gravitated towards books on happiness. Always.
Now that I look back on incidents like this, I realize their meaning. My mom and aunt never said they were unhappy but it was obvious that they’d have loved a more fulfilling and respectful life. Women’s sacrifice in our society is taken for granted; that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s deep-rooted in our collective mentality.
So, why is women’s happiness not considered important?
As the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir explains in her magnum opus The Second Sex, men got an upper hand in the social structure during the Stone Age and subsequent periods when muscular strength was essential to survival. Women were restricted to household activities and child-rearing. Childbirth took a toll on their mental and physical health, further snatching away their autonomy. Men’s control and manipulation of the natural world made them sovereign while women were stuck in their service to the species - the biological misfortune of womanhood.
The agricultural revolution and the emergence of private property are said to have contributed to further inequality as women were treated more as properties than as persons. It was during this time that the institution of marriage came into existence. Marriage back then had nothing to do with love. Women were mere barters in exchange for property or power.
Technological progress especially after the Industrial Revolution reduced the importance of manual strength which enabled women to join the workforce. But men’s social superiority remained intact. This explains that men’s superiority was not natural as many conservative people believe it to be, but was a product of survival convenience that has no relevance today. It’s this historical secondary status of women that affects them to date. de Beauvoir explains this in the philosophical terms of the ‘Subject’ and the ‘Other’. The Subject is a primary, independent, and necessary being while the Other is a secondary, dependent, and inessential being. The Subject and the Other are dependent on each other. The Other serves the Subject in exchange for security and certainty. It’s obvious which category women have always belonged to and why their happiness was never relevant. It also explains how patriarchy might’ve come into existence.
While external factors have a fair contribution towards women’s unhappiness, there are factors that society internalizes in women to trap themselves into a box of unrealistic expectations. Women are expected to look and behave in a certain way — they’re expected to be ‘beautiful’. When you impose third-person expectations on yourself instead of your own, your happiness is bound to get punched in the face. It’s been happening for ages and continues to happen today. The entire cosmetic and jewelry industries stand strong on the women’s insecurities though they market themselves as selling products that empower them. I wonder if they’re being sarcastic because if women are satisfied with their bodies, they’d never need these products.
Solutions
It would be irresponsible of me as an engineer to talk about a problem without discussing its solutions. So here are a few:
Men, you need to step up.
Social conditioning makes it difficult for people to overcome their biases. That’s why you need to take initiative. No one will tell you to do laundry or cook, unless you step forward. Well, I don’t want to do that boring work. I’m good, you might say. But your small actions can make a woman’s life a teeny bit easier and equal. That’s worth it, isn’t it?
Question gender norms
If I were to make a list of arbitrary gender norms, it would be long enough to travel to the moon and back. I’m kidding; it could be longer. Every time someone polices your clothes, expects you to be a better cook because of your gender, or doubts your ability to do a task, question them. It may not make things better, but it’ll at least start a conversation and make the other person realize what they’re doing is not considered appropriate anymore.
Support the women around you
Instead of avoiding other women from going through the terrible experiences they’ve been through, some women make sure other women go through hell as well. It’s sad, but true. It’s difficult to wipe out the stingy traces of misogyny and sexism from your mind but it’s necessary; our lack of support towards each other makes our lives more difficult than we think.
I’ve met women who say, “[Something] is too feminist.” Well, fighting for equality can never be too much. We live in such great times now that the only objective difference between men and women is biological. Nothing else. And to say that equality in all spheres is too feminist is like saying we deserve to be oppressed a bit; that there should be a limit to women’s freedom.
Things are getting better in recent times, but we can’t afford complacency. A long tortuous road ahead of us demands our consistent improvement by challenging our existing beliefs.
By Sakhi Dayanand Gundeti
This is so true