As we celebrate women’s day today, the talks about women’s empowerment will surely do the rounds. We see different shades of women, from managing households to managing offices, women have made their mark. Though quite often we appreciate working women and term the women succeeding in their professional lives as empowerment. However, we do fail at one thing, which is appreciating the different shades that women adorn, from being efficient housemakers to being amazing mothers and supremely talented professionals, women have made a mark in the world. Let us take a look at the ‘kuch rang’ of the women around us, which we quite often fail to see, but these do leave a mark on us.
With the gender roles assigned to us, we tend to normalize the fact that women are bound to do domestic work. We do not appreciate or compensate for the work women do at home to make lives easier for us. We tend to forget how women manage the kitchen, kids, relatives, and home without even asking for payment. Even when a woman is working in the professional sector, they are still expected to manage their homes and be a ‘good’ wife, mother, or daughter. To imagine our lives and homes without a woman seems unimaginable. But do we appreciate the efforts put in by them to manage everything? For instance, In the run to empower women professionally, we fail to see how much effort a housewife puts in to manage the household. Even for a fact, we fail to realize how a working woman has to manage both, the office and home at the same time. Also, the domestic help who comes to our homes is looked down upon even though they are earning by rendering a certain service. Their job is looked down upon unlike other jobs that women do and they do not get the respect they deserve.
The society too burdens women with certain expectations and when a woman is a homemaker they are expected to be obliged to their husband and work for the household without compensation which goes unaccounted for. When a woman is a working professional, they are deemed unfit to manage homes and relationships because being a woman they are breaking free of their exploitative gender roles. On the other hand, we do appreciate mothers and it is quite unimaginable to think of our lives without mothers. However, the patriarchal mentality of the social stereotypes the idea of a ‘single mother’ because for society a mother’s existence is validated by the presence of a father. To think of a woman, who manages work and home single-handedly without seeking the help of a male per se, is quite an impossible task for society. We often do not appreciate single mothers, who take up the role of a father as well, to provide for and protect their family.
On the other hand, women who have taken up jobs that are deemed unfit for women are perceived with surprise. They are highly praised for breaking the stereotypes. However, women doing jobs like selling vegetables, driving cabs, joining the armed forces, and even flying planes are seen as pathbreakers. This leads to an understanding that these jobs are typically ‘male-oriented’. The question is why can’t women doing the work they like to be normalized instead of attaching gendered connotations to jobs. It should not be an out of the way thing to see a female cab driver or a woman supercar racer or for a fact, a team of women playing cricket and other sports that are essentially ‘male’.
There are other shades of women that we quite often fail to see and one of them is how they do not demand any compensation for what they do and the kind of social discrimination inflicted upon them. Women have never been compensated adequately for the work they do beyond their professional lives, and never at least showed respect for the housework they do. The compensation should not be monetary, but rather this compensation should be the respect that women managing houses deserve. To see the various shades in a woman’s life how she justifies each role that she plays is something worth admiring and respecting.
