Gender equality is possible – provided suitable eco system is created.
I opened my eye this morning and looked at the two women I love so much – my mother and my wife. They both are no different except that one was born at the time when her skills were not considered important. I grew up getting compliments for my lunch box, my sweaters. My father proudly used to distribute homemade sweets on festivals. From stitching a handkerchief to a salwar kameez, she knows everything. In addition, she does the bargaining to get us the best possible deal.
I wonder why in our society profession like making handicrafts, cooking, tailoring is considered for families in need and not creative profession. It is consider that the Gender inequality exist mainly because of Social and Biological reasons. But in my opinion, there is another important reason often ignored and I would like to pull everyone’s attention to this key factor - ‘direction of growth of human civilization’.
Human share certain traits across the world. This is evident from similarities in different culture. If we do a time travel and move to the beginning of human civilization we will find that across all the culture man was considered as the bread winner and woman was considered as the home maker. This is in contradiction with the animal world, where female member is responsible to take care of new born babies as well as collect (hunt) food for them. As Human beings, who belongs to the animal family, developed brain, they become much more adaptive to their surroundings and realize that hunting or farming requires more physical labor and hence man were designated to perform this task.
Moving further from that period, when societies were formed, the whole structure became more and more man-centric. Industries were established, long trade routes were built, and nation boundaries were drawn. All the major professions in this time were only suitable for man. Though jobs or other advantages thus perceived from all this development were considered as the next big leap for the civilization but it created the gender bias. The societies did not feel the need for sectors like service industry where woman can contribute a lot. Small scale industries or the cooperative organization were not given any boost either. As working outside become less feasible for women, the whole ecosystem thus nurtured was gender biased.
Had our growth been not skewed toward man, we may have been living in world which differs from ours in below aspect. Some of the below points is reality in developed nations.
1. Our cities might not have grown so big where travelling would have been issue for much greater part of workforce. Alternatively, the need for a comfortable mass rapid transit system would have been realized much before.
2. Such cities would have been much safer for woman as well. The technology to share the information easily would have grown much faster due to concerns like long distance and security and thus mobile penetration and internet usage would have been at much higher level than today.
3. Things like domestic help would have got conceptualized and accepted, which allowed women to own additional responsibility and spare some time out of their daily chores.
4. Many more cooperative societies like Amul would have been in existence. Traditional work, like papad making, would have outsourced from most of the Indian homes to nearby poor families.
5. Work from home or work for 4-5 hours a day would have been an option in many industries.
6. Healthy and hygienic food might have been available at more office, school and colleges cafeterias.
7. Many more Child Day care center would have existed. This would have been a carrier option for women and would also have allowed other women to work outside.
8. Carrier break of more than a year due to maternity would have been accepted.
In the last 40-50 years, as a result of women empowerment, there is ‘the paradigm shift’ in the growth model and gender capability perceptions. Policy makers in government and organization hold the key for the same. Girl fetus protection, child education, tax benefit for women, help line number for women safety are some area through which government is trying to create equal opportunity eco system.
We are now witnessing more and more balanced structure which is striving to dissolve all the inequalities concern and embark into a journey of complete equality.
