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Magazine
THE SHRINKING UNIVERSE
Woman and superwoman
VIJAY NAGASWAMI
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Today’s women are under pressure to juggle with and make a success out of multiple roles…
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Photo: AFP
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A fly on the wall of a psychotherapist’s office in any part of the world may be surprised to note the disproportionately larger number of women help-seekers and might therefore assume that the label of the “weaker sex” is well warra
nted. Of course, the fly would be wrong in coming to this conclusion, but would be perfectly accurate in its observation that more women than men actively attempt to get their heads around any emotional googlies they are suddenly faced with. The explanation for this phenomenon is that women, by virtue of being more in touch with their emotions, a major psychological strength, experience more intensely whatever emotional disturbances their lives may throw up. And not being chary of seeking help, they visit a therapist sooner than later. However, in recent times, larger numbers of urban women seem to feel the need to seek psychotherapy much earlier than they used to. This is not because they are losing their resilience or capacity to cope with stress, but because they are falling victims to the Superwoman Syndrome.
Traditionally, men have derived their identity from playing the provider role and women from the home-making role, and this is true even in some of the matrilineal societies that we come across in our own country. However, in response to centuries of oppression and lop-sided power structures within the man-woman relationship, women, slowly but surely, started sharing the provider role, and with distinction at that. Initially men were threatened, later they were bemused, sometimes they were relieved with the burden being shared and some men even started sharing home-making responsibilities with the woman. In our country, although many empathetic urban men are increasingly beginning to share domestic chores, the primary responsibility for the home-making role is still with the woman.
Implicit assumption
One implicit subtext in all of this is that it seems that the act of going to work is what human development is all about. If you don’t obtain materially gainful employment, you are bound to stagnate, seems the unfounded assumption. Employment is seen as the messiah of modern life and the woman who has been oppressed over generations wants to make sure she gets her fair slice of the pie. But what of the woman who enjoys being a home-maker? What do you do the whole day? How can you be content being just a housewife? You’ll rot. The pressure not to be “just a housewife” is so intense that few women would even allow themselves the luxury of fantasising about this possibility. A pity really, since far from increasing a woman’s choices which is what the women’s liberation movement set out to do, this social attitude has, in fact, reduced the woman’s choices to just one: Be a “working” woman (home-making is not considered “work”). Or perish.
I am, of course, not suggesting that women should not seek to join the work-force if they wish to. That is an individual choice that each woman needs to make. But expecting, as some of us tend to do, that this will restore the balance of power in a man-woman relationship is far-fetched. For, the control games we play are not about economic control, they are about emotional control and even if both partners are employed, the power struggle in the relationship does not abate. New dilemmas emerge. Who will do what chores? Who should take primary responsibility for the child? What happens when one partner gets a transfer or finds a better job in another city? Whose job will be prioritised? What happens when one of the partners earns more than the other? Dilemmas all. Demanding resolution. Thus is born the superwoman. And her remit? To resolve all these dilemmas by taking primary responsibility for all the roles involved in her and her family’s wellbeing. She gives it her best shot, achieves some early success until, inevitably, she too gets tired.
Of course, given the economics of life and lifestyles today, many women also enter the workspace to either contribute to the economic wellbeing of the family or to enjoy economic independence or both. However, this argument cannot really be used to justify the expectation that women should become superwomen. Recent studies in the United States and Western Europe have revealed that a small, though significant percentage of employed urban women are tiring of this role multiplicity and are actually choosing to return, with relief, to single-domain identities.
Recent innovation
The fact that the homemaking responsibility has started to be quantified in economic terms has helped. In some countries such as the Netherlands, a weekly wage rate for homemakers is being defined. Whether homemaker-spouses are actually paid this amount by the provider-spouse on a weekly basis or whether this quantification really comes into effect only in calculating a divorce settlement, I am not really certain, but I think this is a brilliant innovation, for, it truly takes the issue of financial dependence completely out of the equation and thereby expands the choices available to the contemporary woman.
It would be easy to say that today’s women have no choice but to become superwomen, an argument I am hard pressed to buy. The choice to make our lives better is available to all of us, including superwoman-designates, but we need to look for tough answers to hard questions if we are going to achieve this. Let’s be clear about one thing: Being a superwoman, or, for that matter, a superman, is certainly not sustainable and sooner than later, something has to give. However, choosing not to be a superwoman demands a resolve to relentlessly pursue the goal of ensuring responsibility and power-sharing on the part of both spouses. And this will not happen overnight, for, years of conditioning need to be neutralised. But if this process of sharing of responsibilities is approached, not as a gender-based control game, but in the spirit of supporting each other, there is a high probability that each partner will learn to genuinely respect the other’s needs as well as capabilities, and role sharing will automatically fall in place. Then, a woman no longer has to be a superwoman. She can aim for excellence in being whatever she chooses to be — a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a boss or an employee, without the additional burden of juggling multiple roles with inadequate support. What it takes is a belief in oneself, a supportive relationship, and oodles of patience. Happy belated Woman’s Day, not Superwoman’s Day!
The writer is a psychiatrist and author of The 24x7 Marriage. He can be contacted at: vijay.nagaswami@gmail.com.
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