Many women are greatly disturbed by their lot as
women in this changing world. They are becoming painfully conscious of the fact
that there is something basically wrong with woman’s place in the modern world.
The English suffragettes claimed that they had broken the panes of the kitchen
and emancipated women. But the question is, are women really emancipated? Is
the place of work women in society today basically different from that of women
of past centuries?
We find career women everywhere. We find
professional women amidst us. There are women doctors, women lawyers. Women
teachers, women engineers, women business executives. Women compete with men in
every segment of human life. Going a step further woman has equal rights with
men. They have voting rights as well. Women have ventured into fields where
many men dare not travel. A Russian woman astronaut has successfully orbited outer
space. All these we accept taking all for granted.
Although women have made great progress in
education and have contributed their service in different fields of life, the
contention is that the basic attitude of society towards women has not changed
radically so that women are not able to play their proper role to the fullest
measure in society. We often hear of women complaining of the dullness and
loneliness of staying at home and looking after children. Many a married woman
has to give up her career after marriage. Nowadays we hear people talking of
kitchen education for women. It means education in domestic science. Is
domestic science a refined term for kitchen education? There are educationalists
who talk of giving girls an education different from that of boys.
I begin to doubt seriously’ whether women are as
emancipated as they claim to be. Many women deliberately deceive themselves by
thinking they are free and enjoy equal rights with men. The word ‘emancipation”
becomes meaningful only if we care to ask ‘From what do women want to be emancipated?
The emancipation of women, to my mind, should be
from men. And from old ideas and traditional views on their role in society only
when women succeed in freeing themselves from these forces will they find their
proper place in the world.
Nowadays it is fashionable for men to talk eloquently
about freedom arid equality for women. This is insincere talk. Ask any man to
remain at home, cook, wash dishes, scrub the floor, and do a dozen other
everyday chores. At once they retort, this is not a man’s job -- it is the work
of women”. Straight-away they imprison women. ‘Your place is in the home; my
place is outside, they claim, they emphasize the biological role of workmen to
bear and feed children. Men, without any exception, treat women as the weaker
sex’. There is a complete identity in the attitudes of men and society towards women’s
place and role in the community
It is true that the biological role of women is to
hear children hut with the progress of science, children could be fed out of
milk bottles. So the question of feeding the children is solved. Even then if
women elect to spend as much of their time outside as men, the outraged voices
of men will shout women back into their homes again. By feeding the children
out of the bottle the biological limitation on worsens activity outside home
can be partly overcome.
Not content with that, people raise the question of
children losing maternal love, It confounds me why children should have twenty
four hours of maternal love and barely four hours of paternal love. Why not the
other way, or for a change, why not equal hours of maternal and paternal love.
The charge that women are the weaker sex is not
general true. Strength and courage are partly qualities of the mind. And women
have poured that they have these qualities in abundance In the remote past
women were as strong and as brave as men and the’ ranged alongside men in the
forests and countryside engaged in hunting the animals in the forest.
Women are deliberately suppressed by men in their present
position in society. They are forced all the time narrow confines of their
homes. Public opinion is much against women spending most of their time outside
their homes. Women, in my opinion, have not yet achieved their emancipation.
In the modern world, whit opportunities for higher
education, women have a dual role to play; one inside the home, and the other
in the community in which they live; according to Dr. Barbara castle,
women should try to take a keen interest in, and play in active role in, life
outside their home so as to avoid the drudgery, loneliness and disillusion that
may set in the latter part of their married life when their children are grown
up and leave them to live on their own. The opportunity de Behaviour. a world
leading feminist twitter. States that in this changing world there should be a
new era of partnership between men and women - a partnership in which both are
protectors and home builders together. It is out of tune with the trend of time
to give women only the job of nest building and home keeping. The attitude of
men that Awash I shall bring the bacon and our shall do the cooking should
undergo a revolutionary change. The changed outlook should be Let us both being
the bacon and let us both do the cooking.
Only when men and society at large accept this view.
Can the emancipation of women become a reality Society should begin to think of
women first as human beings. And then one as women. Women should be given the
opportunity and freedom to spend a few hours away from the home, to engage them
in some kind of work in the community so as to keep away the feeling of
frustration and loneliness that may arise if they remain within the walls of
the home all the time. Humanity will achieve its highest and noblest ideas only
if men cease to treat women as their property and regard them as equals.