This is Part 2 of a multi-part series. Click here to read Part 1.
“Who takes care of the kid at home?” I am asked often. At work. Outside work. By clients and colleagues. By acquaintances and strangers.
In fact someone recently went so far as to say, “oh you must be working from home full time, that’s how you are able to manage the kid”.
It’s a question that, I am very sure, my spouse is never asked. Or at least not as much as I am asked.
Parenting is the mother’s primary job, all else negotiable. Breadwinning is the father’s primary job, all else avoidable.
How often have you seen women try to explain why they work, whether asked or not, almost sounding apologetic in the process?
Have to help out with the home loans, that’s the only reason.
Kid has grown older and doesn’t need me anymore.
Not a bad idea to earn some pocket money.
Am not really working working, just helping my husband with his business.
Just part time. Just remote. Just a trial.
Just. Just. Just.
Because women are looked at primarily as caregivers, primary caregivers in that, their money has not been inherently considered in the financial equation of a home, in supporting their parents, or saving for their children’s education.
In fact, in modern India, most parents still abhor being supported financially by their married daughters. A married daughter’s money belongs to the house she’s married into, is the common refrain. How can we take money from our daughter, she shouldn’t be supporting us, it should be the other way round, is the other, dare I say, more patriarchal view.
As a friend put it very elegantly, the “negative motivation” to quit a paying job is far lower (even inexistent) for women compared to men.
And hence the quest for “meaningful work” is far higher for women than men.
If you have been in paying jobs for a while now, you would appreciate that making a job meaningful everyday is next to impossible. Jobs are like life, part of life. They are BAU (Business As Usual) some days, boring other days, and a significant high on a few days, making you look back and say “wow”.
So, how can we bring motivation into the equation to help women build their own rationale to stay in a paying job?
Easy kill: The power of money. Let’s go back to the basics. What does money earned today look like a few decades down the line? How can it compound? How will it help in old age? Why is it important to be financially independent and think of retirals as an individual’s corpus? How is the world evolving and getting more expensive? Perhaps all it takes is a few reinforceable sessions. Public service announcements. Women’s day events focused on the power of financial independence rather than plying platitudes on women as multi-handed goddesses.
Not-so-easy kill: The power of ambition. We need more stories, chronicles of successful women in the corporate world that are not one-offs but more normalised. More of senior women need to be able to talk about the hardships of parenting coupled with the challenges of a full-time career, rather than make it a very generic “we can have it all”.
The most complicated kill: The power of society. What is most powerful but also needs the most sustained effort is shifting societal mindset, around the gendered roles of men and women, of moms and dads. How breadwinning and caregiving roles can be fluid, why ambitious women are not bad women, what’s not taboo about parents getting financial support from their daughters. Any idea I give here will be simplistic. But, if we all start one family at a time, one home at a time on these “radical” thought processes, maybe change will happen eventually.
Do you have any personal stories that you would like to share on the topic? I’d be happy to chat and learn more from you, here in comments or via email responses to this post.
P. S. Views strictly personal. None of the events mentioned in this post refer to the organisation that I am currently associated with.