“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” ― Anaïs Nin
The sunrise was warm and Joe woke up early to see the vibrant morning. Since being a Sunday, it was the only day he could hang out with his family. Other days would be more stressful and the only relief to him comes in the form of the Sunday. For him, he is the only man in the world who is assigned with the hardest job description on earth or that’s what he thinks.
He thought of going to the movie with his parents. His father who is on the verge of getting retired from his reputed government post and his mother, a home maker. He had booked tickets to a movie which has been recently released featuring Madhavan in the lead. Since the reviews of the movies were good , he wished to see it along with his family.
After finishing their lunch they started to the theater which is close to their home. Joe’s mom was very fascinated as she was going to watch a movie after a very long time. They reached the theater on time. Saala Khadhoos (the name of the movie of course )started and the crowd went crazy. The movie was all about women boxing and how a coach struggles to bring a woman from a fishing town in Chennai to become the world champion in boxing. The movie ended and Joe with his family came out and started to return to their home.
Joe’s mother mind was full of Madhi , the female protagonist of the movie. She was talking about the heroics of that heroine all the way. Joe was too impressed but didn’t want to talk too much about it.
After reaching their home, everyone was too lazy to do their work and found their ways to the chairs and sat before the TV.
Suddenly Joe was invaded with thoughts about his tomorrow’s dress for his work and so did his father about Monday’s office wear. They both reminded her mom that still she didn’t wash their clothes. Joe’s mother had some thoughts raised in her mind with questions like ‘ Why a woman always do the washing , cooking and other works’. ‘Why men don’t care about these works?
Even though she made the washing her thoughts went back to her childhood days where she was instructed to learn cooking , washing and household works , since she had to do all these things in her husband’s house. Suddenly a question raised in her mind again ” Why did the parents didn’t teach their sons about the equal sharing of work or women are in no ways lower than men?”. She was searching answers and she couldn’t find any answers to the question.
The day moved and Monday morning arrived with the questions still in the mind of Joe’s Mom. Joe and his father went to their respective works and their washed clothes were neatly ironed by their mother and she even prepared their breakfast and lunch.
Even Joe was struck with the same kind of question , why he told his mom to wash it. So Joe opened Google (The mind palace of humans) in his office and her mother opened Google in their home desktop respectively.
Google directed them to statistics about these things.
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Worldwide,200 million more men than women have internet & women are 21% less likely to own a phone
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Indian women were paid only 62% of salary for equal works.
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Only 30% of India’s tech force is made up of women.
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New research suggests banks run by women might be less vulnerable in a crisis
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In 88 yrs, The Academy nominated 4 women in best-director category,only 1 woman won.
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“Eliminating employment gender gaps could boost GDP by 5% in the US, 9% in Japan & 27% in India”
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Globally 21% of young women (versus 4% men) say they can’t work b/c of family responsibility & housework.
These stimulated some differences in Joe and his mother closed the browser thinking , women’s empowerment not lies in these statistics but in the reality only when women are given equal opportunities and when these qualities begin at home.
In the evening Joe while returning from work , stopped for the traffic signal and saw a girl selling flowers and when she asked Joe , he bought the flowers fully which costed him the previous day’s movie tickets cost.
He returned home and his father too arrived in a short while. When they were eating their supper , his father told his mom to wash the clothes as it has got stains. His mother got up and Joe stopped him and told that he will wash the clothes. Joe’s mother couldn’t believe what was happening. His father was puzzled.
After that Joe collected the clothes and switched on the washing machine with the clothes. He took out his smartphone and opened the Facebook app and typed a status
” Surely Laundry is not a Women’s work ” and also used ” washing the clothes” and tagged his location. The status ended like but the change towards the perception of work changed that too from his own house.
Joe texted his mom to take the flowers from the reading room and added he will share the load.
“I am joining the Ariel #ShareTheLoad campaign at BlogAdda and blogging about the prejudice related to household chores being passed on to the next generation.”
*** The above story is purely fictional but the statistics given are taken from The UN Women’s Twitter page. Names of the characters are purely fictional and not intentional (No pun intended) ***
*** Images are original and created by me *** (credits to me :p)
Happy Reading,
Zudin 