Women, work and self worth
In the movie ‘Lipstick under my Burkha’, Konkona Sen Sharma’s character lives a secret life working as a salesperson. She is so good at her job, that she gets promoted to the post of a Sales Trainer. Her job is the lipstick under her burkha — A window to explore her own potential, opened illicitly against the wishes of a husband who doesn’t believe a good Indian wife should go out and work. “You’re a wife. Don’t try and be the husband”, he says. Of course, it’s her ‘going out’ that’s a problem, and not her working. A good Indian wife does work. But at home, to take care of her family. With no compensation or fixed timings.
As a market researcher, I have worked with firms who recruit respondents for interviews and focus group discussions. They charge more to recruit men, than they do to recruit women (mainly housewives. ‘Working women’ is a niche segment that is not researched as often, but that’s a story for another time). The reason behind this is that a homemaker’s time is assumed to be more easily available and hence worth lesser than a man who is assumed to be working the entire day. To this day, I can’t help but wonder how natural this state of affairs is. It isn’t a matter of taking homemakers’ work for granted. It is a matter of not acknowledging the work that a woman puts into keeping her house and taking care of her family, as labour.
So, when a woman goes out to work, is when she realizes the monetary worth of her own time and efforts. Her work gains legitimacy. She can earn money and choose what to spend it on. While this in itself is liberating, having a job buys her some freedom of choice in other areas of her life as well. And once she gets this taste of freedom, it is difficult to turn back.
The other day, I was speaking to a beautician who visits our building, offering beauty salon services at home. She told me that she stumbled into her job in the quest to support her family financially, and that she’s come to love it. Her job makes her feel accomplished, and she doesn’t want to settle for a life less fulfilling anymore. She told me,
“My mother wants to arrange my marriage and keeps sending me profiles of prospective grooms to consider. I have rejected a lot of men who told me I can’t work after marriage. I have made it clear that I can’t not work. It’s okay if my marriage is delayed. These days, even women marry late.”
Having a job doesn’t absolve a woman of the household responsibilities entrusted to her gender. But it does help her get away with some things that would be expected out of her otherwise. A job gets her the license to live in a city away from her parents, to travel for work, or to stay out till late, in the line of duty. A woman I know once told me about how her in-laws used to humiliate her because of her inept performance in the kitchen. Until she got a coveted job in a well-known firm, and they started seeing her as a successful woman who was sometimes allowed to get away with not being very ‘homely’.
Having somewhere to go and appointments to keep, gives us a sense a purpose. Of course, these personal motives to work are shaped by an underlying cultural truth of our times — the fact that we live in a world where our identity and worth is associated with our occupation and how much we earn. The question “What do you do?, is commonly asked in the quest to know someone better, and it always means “What job do you do?”.
I once interviewed a woman, whose parents gave her away to her uncle when she was just a child. She told me,
“I started losing my sight at the age of 8. So, my parents gave me away to my uncle, thinking his family would have better means to raise me. My uncle and his wife used to make me work all day long to cook for them, take care of their babies and clean the house. But they would also insult me all the time. One day, my uncle told me that I am so worthless that even my parents don’t want me. I couldn’t bear to stay with them anymore. I ran away, went to a factory and begged them to give me work. They paid peanuts, but at least I got paid. I worked with a vengeance. And here I am, doing a desk job, working as a telephone operator. I feel proud of my journey and my success.”
The truth is, the codes of success in our culture are gendered. Going to an office for work, slogging hard to make money, rising through the ranks — these are the rituals associated with success. That’s why, Doctors and CEOs are inadvertently and sometimes mistakenly assumed to be men. A woman who wakes up early to cook different meals for her children, husband and in-laws, or works incessantly through the day to keep the house clean or arranges meals at the drop of a hat for guests of the family that come unannounced — this woman would not be described as ‘successful’. Her efforts may earn her compliments, but these compliments are momentary. They don’t become feathers in her hat, or a permanent part of her identity like a job does. When she enters the man’s world, is when she gets a taste of acknowledgement and success.
So, she works. To succeed, she plays by the rules of the world she lives in. She works to discover herself and to make the world take notice of her. She works to add dignity to her labour, and sometimes, she overachieves in her quest to do this. Like Chimamanda Adichie says, it’s not about the job — it’s about what the job does for you. And because the personal is political, perhaps one day, ‘success’ would stop being a gendered territory and its domain would expand to accommodate all kinds of accomplishments, no matter where they come from.
