Its Time for the Inequality to Reach the Exit Door

In the present corporate environment, there are a handful of married women those who excel in both work and their personal life.They are full of energy, highly spirited and competitive. While interacting with them, I found that their hubbies shoulder some of the so called "responsibilities of women" at home. The spouses share the domestic chores, child care and all the family responsibilities. They ensure that none of them are overburdened. If this looks like an Utopian situation for you, believe me, such families do exist. A new breed of younger generation follow this model to ensure that they stride forward. Hats off to them!

But there are also many families which still stick to the Adam days' rules . Few years back, when I was pursuing my under graduation in Sociology, we did a small survey on " the Attitude of Men towards Mate Selection".Surprisingly, the result was that the majority of men in the marriageable age group would accept if their would-be wives earn in par or more than them whereas they were not willing to extend any support for women in their domestic chores, in particular, for cooking. But they preferred to marry working women to be spared of their financial burden .Well, this survey was conducted among young men in and around Chennai six years ago. The attitude of men could have changed now. Moreover, the IT boom has made major alteration in the lifestyle of people. In particular, if both husband and wife work in a highly demanding environment such as IT, sharing family and financial burden among husband and wife becomes inevitable. Many men seem to have realized this. What about women? What is there stand in this?

Well, a few days ago, we, some of the old pals flocked together at a friend's home for spending time together. We all exchanged our views on our ideal man. All of us had these points in common. We all wanted a forward thinking (modern in outlook, belief in equality etc) boy. Similarly, his family should also have a modern outlook. He should accept us for what we are
( should not impose changes or restrictions on our way of dressing etc). He should not be too orthodox or belong to the old school of thoughts. The boy should earn a decent compensation or at least should have the potential to come up in life. We do not want someone who has merely inherited some wealth from his father/grand father as a stroke of good fortune .Similarly, we all wanted a boy who has a pleasing personality to an extent. Ok, lets come to the meat of the matter.We believe in division of labor.We do not want to be over loaded. We all thought that we should take time out for catching up with our friends and indulge in our interests even after marriage.But we had different views on the habits or personality of the boy. Some of us expected a boy with clean habits such as non-smoking, non-alcoholic etc But there were also few who do not care about that. Remember, this is not just the views of few close pals but I come across many young people such as my colleagues and other friends with same expectations. Well, the present day working Indian woman want to be treated with equality, to be respected for what they are, and do not want to be overloaded in the guise of empowerment. What do you say?