Check out 16 Return-To-Work Programs In India For Ambitious Women Like You!
We all have set ideas about how people should look and behave. Here's a note about why this author does not look foreign-returned and how it empowers her.
We all have set ideas about how people should look and behave. Here’s a note about why this author does not look foreign-returned and how it empowers her.
I am writing this, somewhere around the same time as the video for Vogue empower series, featuring Deepika Padukone, is finding its share of critics and admirers; more critics than admirers at least from the reactions I have witnessed in the cyberworld. As for me, except for some questionable ideas, I don’t in particularly think the video is as ‘silly’ and ‘fake’ as lot of men and women have found it to be, and I definitely don’t have a problem with Deepika Padukone being its face.
After all, we live in a country where Amitabh Bachchan had been the good-old ambassador for polio eradication, and Vidya Balan in a multitude of well-meaning get-ups has been preaching the importance of having a ‘shouchalaya‘ inside one’s house. All forms of empowerment, in their own ways, make use of popular and well-regarded celebrities. Why then should Ms Padukone be targeted for doing her own ‘bit’? But, this piece is not about the video or Ms Padukone. This is not about feminism, or an attempt to say that women are inherently superior creatures than men. None of that. This is only about that one aspect of the word that makes up the title of the video, the word ‘choice’, and the other big word ’empower’.
I did not feel the need to become a different person just because I happened to live in a different geography for a while.
The ones that are more disturbing are the ones where people give me a “Oh-darling-I-can-see-that-you-are-lying-I-mean-look-at-you-haa-haa-who-are-you-kidding-stayed-in-US-it-seems” look.
Clearly people, I’d like to think I am empowered enough to make my kind of choices.
Writer and technologist currently based out of Bangalore read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
If her home and family seem to be impacted by her career then we expect her to prioritize her ‘responsibilities at home as a woman’ and leave her job.
The entrenched patriarchal norms have always perpetuated certain roles and responsibilities as falling specifically in the domain of either men or women. Traditionally, women have been associated with the domestic sphere while men have been considered the bread winner of the household. This division of roles has become so ingrained in our lives that we seldom come to question it. However, while not being questioned does give the system a certain level of legitimacy, it in no way proves its veracity.
This systematic division has resulted in a widely accepted notion whereby the public sphere is demarcated as a men’s zone and the private sphere as belonging to women. Consequently, women are expected to stay at home and manage the household chores while men are supposed to go out and make a living with no interest whatsoever in the running of the household.
This divide is said to be grounded in the intrinsic nature of men and women. Women are believed to be compassionate, affectionate and loving and these supposedly ‘feminine’ qualities make them the right fit for caring roles. Men, on the other hand are allegedly more sturdy, strong and bold and hence, the ones to deal with the ordeals of the outside world.
Investing in women means many things beyond the obvious meaning of this IWD2024 theme, as the many orgs doing stellar work can show us.
What does it mean to invest in women?
Telling the women in our lives how great we think they are? That we value the sacrifices they have made? (Usually though not necessarily only – a sacrifice of their aspirations, careers and earning potential in order to focus on family).
No, thank you. Just talk is no longer going to cut it. Roses and compliments are great, but it’s time people, leaders, organizations put their money, capital, resources on track instead.
Please enter your email address