After world war 2, west underwent a huge reconstruction work. A million+ working age men had died in battle and there was a great shortage of labour to meet the demand of reconstruction. The reconstruction was riding on top of an industrial revolution, so demand was really high. If the demand was not met, cost of labour would multiply many fold. Many business were used to cheap labour (some time free labour from prison inmates) and were not ready to take up the reconstruction work, till labour costs were controlled. Govts had 2 options. Encourage immigration from 3rd world or engage more citizen (like bringing in non working people, raising the retirement age etc). Encouraging immigration had its own set of problems. Immigrants are expected to send back their earnings to their host countries and remain poor in the immigrated country. That means, wealth is shared with 3rd world and at home, more lower classes will emerge fragmenting the society. Lower classes will bring poverty and racism, which will reflect on politicians. On the other hand, majority of the non-working population were women, who were loaded with day to day house hold activities. Women were happy and cozy at home. Bringing them on to the labour market, will result in nuclearisation of families, increase discontent in family life. Looking at the options, business houses saw an opportunity. Nuclear family means, more consumption and that is good for business. They also knew, double income in the hands of husband & wife will temporarily mask the discontent in family life. Since politicians were fearful of loosing support due to racism, businesses lobbied for the other option. Political class agreed with one condition. Bringing women to labour market needs to be a smooth process with less negative effects on to their political profile. Govt needed a story to begin with and to start pulling out women from the comforts of their houses. So, a media campaign was launched on the "women empowerment". Women who were suffering due to war, collapsed economy and other ills of society were targeted and their anger was consolidated. The anger was redirected against men and in-laws as oppressors. A picture is painted that, men are the reason for their suffering (while war and economy were the culprits). The idea worked. Labour market stabilized, businesses got cheap labour and consumption soared, . Economy flourished. Wealth remained in the rich countries. However there was a price. Families got nuclearised. Work load on women increased, children suffered due to lack of support. Debt, Alcoholism, drugs & divorce increased. Sociatal values lowered.
As far as the business houses were considered, the formula worked well. They were very happy. After capitalizing in the developed world, They wanted to apply the formula in 3rd world also to expand their business. Although 3rd world is rich in man power, "women empowerment" campaign was launched. In India, unemployment is a basic problem. Instead of rationalizing work among families, women employment was encouraged. This has created double income families on one side and more un-employed families on the other side. Employed woman does not marry an un-employed man. So, a skewed social structure emerged.
The double income families helped to fuel consumption, but started injecting the same problems of west in India as well. Impact of suffering is many fold in 3rd world countries as more people will be dependent on one person. Unlike in west, there is no support systems to relocate affected people (be it drugs, old age homes, child care centers etc). So, impact is large. The working women is causing more discontent among women in un-emplyed families.
The double income families helped to fuel consumption, but started injecting the same problems of west in India as well. Impact of suffering is many fold in 3rd world countries as more people will be dependent on one person. Unlike in west, there is no support systems to relocate affected people (be it drugs, old age homes, child care centers etc). So, impact is large. The working women is causing more discontent among women in un-emplyed families.
India has respected women since early ages. Each god is given a consort to show this equality (this is not the case in west). Many practices like 'sati' are adopted by women themselves to protect against aggressors and not imposed by men. Women find their role and hand in all aspects of societal activity, be it art, architecture, war or medicine. If society is skewed towards men, we would not be hearing a story like jhansi rani. In fact the epics talk of 'swaymwara' to enable a girl to choose a groom of her liking, while the epics from west celebrates a picture of women in slavery market. Freedom and equality is visible on the scripted walls of all temples (which are the real history books in India). This is the reality.
However, no body in media gives this picture. Paid media like TOI and paid authors continue to take single events, generalize the problems and are thrusting it on society (For example read http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…/articleshow/9237496.cms?). An incident of rape is generalized to paint a picture that, all men have intention to rape. This creates more insecurity in society and break up families. Women should understand the reality. Women are not the only sufferers. Children, elders and even men are suffering. The situation is complex due to diversity (multi ethnic, multi cultured, fragmented society with multi layered class system). There sufferings are due to in-equal distribution of resources and lack of development. Men and in-laws are not the reason for all the ills faced by women. Definitely Indian women are stressed more than say women in Norway/Sweden. But this is true for children, men and elders too. The stress is due to large population, limited resources and in-equitable distribution. Increased burden of education, difficult travel conditions, inflated prices are retarding the progress. Men are as helpless as women. A man works hard to accumulate wealth for the family, especially for children. But these children are left to be molded by women. Man is working for children future, but their future (meaning the entire families future) is given in to the hands of women. Isn't this empowering? Without understanding the reality, subscribing to the business funded ideas of empowerment and blaming men will not solve anything. Most of the burden (as depicted in cartoon in beginning) faced by women are originated by children and not by men (who are working out of home more than 10 hours a day now). Serving and supporting children should not be considered as burden. It is a debt we need to repay (debt is given by our parents, but we need to reimburse it to our children with interest). Supporting children is not unique to Indian women alone. Although many working option exists, many European women prefer to stay at home and take care of their children. Motherhood practiced and celebrated more than womanhood worldwide!
1) A nice video celebrating Mother hood across world.
<div id="fb-root"></div><script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10151241730702242" data-width="466"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10151241730702242">Post</a> by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/shankar.naidu">Shankar Naidu</a>.</div></div>
2) A blog write up by a mother converted from 'working mother' status to a 'stay at home mom (SAHM)
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