Change The Date Please. But First, Change The Mindset…
By Ratna Bhushan Bagchi
So it’s here. That day again. That One Day on the calendar. Year after year. Does it change anything? Something?
I look around me. Hoping.
At the construction site next door, I see a set of people at work. Predictably, it’s the lady who’s multi-tasking – she’s tending to her child, playing with him, humouring him, and setting the bricks – alternately. Her hubby dearest is only setting the bricks. No, she doesn’t seem to be grudging the roles. It’s like she’s conditioned. I ask her if she minds it. “Of course not. It’s my duty to do both. I’m a woman,” she replies in fluent Hindi, looking at me strangely.
I browse the internet to see what people are posting. No surprises – Indra Nooyi’s legendary post about women-and-work is being shared and re-shared yet again. On the night she came home after being named PepsiCo President, back in 2001, and her mother sent her out to get some milk. Nooyi quotes her mother as saying: “You may be President of PepsiCo. But when you step into this house, you’re a wife and mother first. Nobody can take that place. So leave that crown in the garage.” My aunt, adorable as she is, has this to say: “See, even Ms Nooyi has to keep family first always. And that’s the way it should be for women.”
I check WhatsApp. There’s a vent from a dear friend who lives in a joint family. She’s being marginalised, yet again, by the women relatives in her household. “I’ve told my husband so many times and he just says women are like this only,” she writes.
I call up an ailing cousin to ask how he’s been doing. “I’m doing much better and should be able to rejoin office next week. But you know what – that woman – the one seeing her team leader – that happening guy – just to be able to climb the corporate ladder. She’s got her promotion yet again. Women can be so, you know, that way.” He’s totally convinced about his nuances about gender.
Sigh.
We are either ‘that way’ or ‘this way’.
Either martyrs or home-wreckers.
The perfect home-makers or vamps-at-work.
Always judged with the lens of ‘gender’. Never for who we are as ‘individuals’.
As yet another International Women’s Day is upon us, here’s to us.
To women who fix each other’s crowns even before they know that crown needs fixing.
To the women who bring down other women in joint families and workplaces.
To those gender skewed jokes and memes both men and women crack up about.
To the companies endlessly doing cute marketing pitches to sell their roses, jewellery, perfumes, dresses, dates and dinners.
To the deep thinkers at think-tanks who host seminars and chat shows, talk of feminism and make posts viral on social media.
Change the date please.
But before that, change the mindset.
ends
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