Stereotypes and histrionics do not last for long. With changing times, even Gender Stereotypes and Gender Based Histrionics are being forced to undergo a change. For centuries together, man has been the breadwinner of the family, sweating it out in the sun, dealing with unknown people and risking his life at times while the woman used to take care of the family and dealing mostly with known people in a closed and safe environment.
Slowly the woman started moving out and started to work, however, the primary financial responsibility lay on the man and it was considered highly demeaning for the man if the woman earned money and the man had to depend on her. Poor woman was viewed as victim, being forced to work by the non-working man. Such an ideology simply did not allow the man to be non-working lest his life was made hell sans dignity.
However, the converse has not been always true. When, on one hand, the man was always forced to work and earn money, the woman has never really been forced to look after the house. Whatever women did, they did it out of their own volition and if any woman did not take care of the family it was considered as a torture on the woman to force her to do household work. Even draconian, gender-obsessed and lopsided laws were drafted and passed to protect such women whose growing misuse is no longer a fiction story.
Slowly the concept of a woman working gained prominence, although the primary financial responsibility wrested with the man. With the concept of WORKING WOMAN gaining prominence, the insecurities of the conservatives and the hopes of liberals (who were actually conservatives’ turned dissidents) flared up laying the foundations of a cultural war which later ensued into a gender war.
However, now I will come back to the advantages of having a working woman. A working woman is always advantageous, which men do not realize.
But before talking of the advantages, I would like to clarify that when the woman works, the primary financial responsibility lays on her. When the woman takes the primary financial responsibility, the advantages that men get are listed here:-
1. Responsibility: She understands the concept of responsibility and also that how difficult it is to bear responsibility. This tells it to her how difficult it is when you need to earn money, take responsibility and plan your finances accordingly which puts her into analysis mode and stops her from taking treacherous and extremist stands the way women do now.
2. Spending Onus: Since the primary financial responsibility lies on the woman, the spending onus is on the man. This will slowly shift the economics around men’s products and men’s issues will also gain prominence the way now economics revolves around women’s products and women’s issues. Men do not need 4 saris a month and a new pair of shoes a month. Men do not need to go to beauty parlor. This will lead to fewer tussles in marriages and relationships as spending will be less and stress levels will be lower owing to lesser financial squabbles since financial squabbles are the biggest cause of erosion in relationships which subsequently seep into other arenas of a relationship which ultimately kills it.
3. Maintenance: In case the marriage breaks, the man can claim maintenance since the man had taken care of the house and is now not only vagrant and destitute but also incapable to earn. This will make women cautious about breaking marriages and will put in more tolerance before hitting the nail on the wedlock. This trend will become a saving grace for the institution of marriage dying currently under the onslaught of legal terrorism.
4. Attitude Shift: There can be a counter argument that in such as case, men would opt to break marriages. It has to be borne in mind that it’s a result oriented argument and not process oriented. The arguments in favor of shifting the primary financial responsibility from men to women reflect a major attitude shift which will not happen overnight and also the existing perverted social setups and decades old social and mental hardwiring will be a further impediment to the said attitude shift. Also, in order to empower men to break marriages (the way women are empowered currently with a volley of easily misusable laws at their disposal like arsenal in warfare), men will need laws in their favor which also won’t be a reality for some years. And this exercise of attitude shift would have already stabilized the institution of marriage rendering multiple, gender obsessed, and biased marital laws quintessentially ineffective, redundant, irrelevant and uncalled for.
5. Liberation of Men: Allowing women to work wherein they assume the role of the primary financial backbone of the family would liberate men from a role they have donned for millions of years and would allow them to live the kind of life they want to. A life that does not force the man to compromise his interests and hobbies just in order to enable himself as the primary breadwinner of the family. Men can concentrate on other areas and improve their emotional and psychological health which will ultimately move them closer to their experiential domain.
6. Debunking of a major prediction: It has been predicted that men would be extinct in the next 5 million years or so by geneticist and specialist in human chromosomes, Professor Jennifer Graves, as explained in Men: The Invisibly Abandoned Diaspora, but as explained above, men would be liberated and this would ultimately improve not only the general emotional and psychological health of men but also compensate the genetic wear and tear of men that they have undergone and can probably work towards restoration of the Y Chromosome and delay its becoming Why Chromosome? That would debunk the prediction made by Professor Jennifer Graves.
The currently proposed Women’s Reservation Bill in Indian Parliament that vouches for 33% reservation of Women in the Parliament should actually be extended to 50% reservation for Women in all spheres – politics, judiciary, bureaucracy, police, armed forces, public and private sector jobs, entrepreneurship, etc. for 2 main reasons:
1. Women are no less: Nature does not do gender discrimination while distributing talent, offering 33% reservation to women in parliament is like an offering made to beggar. Do women deserve such a treatment? Certainly not. It’s a shame on women’s rights activist to be begging for women and demeaning the dignity of women.
2. Half-Hearted effort is a waste: If Women’s Reservation is being touted as the next big step in Women’s Empowerment then asking for a mere 33% reservation only in the Parliament is actually a deceit with women. True empowerment cannot be achieved by pampering a section of affluent and influential women to the top positions by way of reservations. It can only happen when every woman – whether affluent and influential or otherwise – gets an equivocal and unbiased opportunity to perform in addition with the confidence from the society that she can bear responsibilities.
And this Woman Empowerment, when it happens will work as a win-win situation for both men and women. Men will get time and space to regain their lost dignity and women will get a chance to prove their mettle.
