Shes in the rain, clad in a chiffon saree which clings to her but decorously so, swinging and singing with her children. The contest, to promote soap, urges children to explain Kya Kool Hai Mum. After being judged as sex objects and as home makers, women will now also be told how theyre doing as mothers. It had to happen. As more women join the work force and traditional bastions fall, the pressure is increasing on them to perform, as good mothers, wives, daughters and workers. As society demands more from them, they demand more from themselves, juggling roles and time. As they move on from being domestic divas ensconced in the bosom of the traditional household, they are slowly emerging as the ambassadors of a new model of feminism, where having to do it all.
Its a model that has many votaries. Anthropologist Helen E.Fisher, who wrote the seminal The First Sex, flags the return of Indian Women to the workforce as being part of a global trend (United Nations Demographic Year Book 2005 shows that women account for 60 per cent of service sector jobs).Women, she says, are re-acquiring the economic status they had in the hunter gatherer era This will herald widespread lifestyle changes which call for their special skills- unlike men whose thinking is linear, the female brain enables women to do web or synthesis thinking.
What will happen to traditional relationships in India as women shed their conventional roles and head back to the work force in a far more enabling than ever before? Will the battle of the sexes take on a new edge? Will alpha moms morph into beta career girls or will there be a synthesis? Even the West, which has an older history of working women, is struggling with the answer in an age of heightened consumerism. But it is a question which is inescapable, especially since global data indicates that one in four married women earns more than her husband- giving credence to Norman Mailers terror theory: that eventually women will take over the world.
As women affect a shift in the way they handle the double-day burden, they are also learning to feel good about being able to cope. The old equation that working mothers=neglected homes, has been rewritten, at least in the womans mind. Money is not the only reason women want to step out of the bounds of the home. Work allowed them an escape, a safety hatch, and a chance to get recognition. Especially now, when the media is projecting successful young women.
But the problems remain intractable. Even highly educated middle-class working women are seen as supplementing the family income, not as primary bread earners. Its something women tend not to challenge, as a recent Punjab University study on 120 odd working middle class women showed.
Though middle-women enjoy greater social and economic space, they are still looking for an institutional support mechanism that takes care of their stress- as in the case of men. Even women who have made it to higher professional echelons are expected to be homemakers first. The ball and chain has been loosened, but only just.
Does the problem lie with the middle class Indian man? Do man work and rest while women work and work? By stretching to the limit, women are harming their health. But it is a path that has no U-turn. For many women, dil mangta more materialism leaves no choice but to earn.
