Feminists and scholars have
divided the movement's history into three "waves". The first wave refers
mainly to women's movements of the nineteenth century, mainly concerned with
women's right to vote. The second wave had women campaigning for legal and
social rights. The third wave refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to
the perceived failures of, second-wave feminism.
First-wave feminism focused on
the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and the
opposition to marriage and ownership of married women by their husbands.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century, activism focused primarily on
gaining political power.
Second-wave feminists saw women's cultural and
political inequalities as intimately linked and encouraged women to understand
aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized and as reflecting sexist
power structures.
Third-wave
feminism also contains debates between different feminists who believes that
there are important differences between the sexes and those who believe that
there are no intrinsic differences between the sexes and contend that gender
roles are due to social taming.
The women that believe and practice feminism have two ways of
promulgating their views, the one who desire equality and the other who
radically fight for gender based privileges. They're the kind to which one
would refer to as feminazi and
they're the same kind who use their gender to get impunity against the law
while hollering that they're empowered. There is a very small minority of
radical feminists that may or may not want female supremacy, but these
particular feminists are small in number and do not represent third wave
feminism as a whole.
For the most part, radical feminists are those that are
pro-active and do most of the protesting, marches, etc. Not all feminists can
go up against patriarchy and male oppression like radical feminists can. Feminism
might be taking form of a revolution, considering the agitation out there
regarding the recent injustice against women.
Sexism negatively impacts men by forcing them into a hyper-masculinity which engages high-risk behaviour and limits their emotional expression. However, regardless of these and other secondary effects of sexism, men still benefit from patriarchy (the social system of sexism) whether or not they choose to fight sexism in others or themselves. So if men cannot be feminists how can we be a part of a feminist agency? Does feminism address only women or doesn’t it also address men in some way? Perhaps men need to be “menists,” supporting women in their feminist work while allowing feminism to work on them, challenging themselves and other men to end patriarchy.
Another way to
make an immediate impact is to be an example. Act in accordance with your
values; treat people equally as individuals; acknowledge the plethora of
problems women still struggle with. It's easy to join in with the "boys
will be boys" chatter about women and sex. You can still participate, but
be a leader and change the tone of the conversation.
Gender
discrimination continues to be an enormous problem within Indian society.
Traditional patriarchal norms have relegated women to secondary status within
the household and workplace. This drastically affects women's health, financial
status, education, and political involvement. Additionally, only 54 percent of
Indian women are literate as compared to 76 percent of men. Women receive
little schooling, and suffer from unfair and biased inheritance and divorce
laws.
As an example - For many men in
Rajasthan, migration is required since rural parts of Rajasthan often lack a
sufficient economy to provide income for a family year-round. Women are
commonly left behind to care and provide for the entire household. This is
increasingly difficult because it is estimated that an average woman's wage is
30 percent lower than a man's wage working in a similar position. While these
mothers work, they must also tend to domestic responsibilities. This formula
for supporting Rajasthani families leaves little resource for the growth and
development of women’s rights and education levels.
Although socially women have been at a disadvantage,
Indian laws highly favour women. If a husband commits adultery he will be
jailed, but a woman cannot be jailed for adultery and neither will she be
punished by the courts. There is no recognition of sexual molestation of men
and rarely the police stations lodge a First Information Report (FIR); men are considered the culprit by default even if it
was the woman that committed sexual abuse against men. Women can jail husband's family for
dowry related cases by just filing an FIR.
After
decades of antidiscrimination laws, diversity initiatives and feminist
advocacy, such data leads to an uncomfortable question: Do women actually want
equality? The answer seems transparently, blindingly, obvious.
But from
another perspective, the answer is anything but clear. In fact, there’s good
reason to think that women don’t want the sort of equality envisioned by
government bureaucrats, academics and many feminist advocates, one imagined
strictly by the numbers with the goal of a 50-50 breakdown of men and women in
C-suites, law-school dean offices, editorial boards and computer-science
departments; equal earnings, equal work hours, equal assets, equal time
changing diapers and doing the laundry. “A truly equal world,” Sheryl Sandberg
wrote in Lean In, “would be one where women ran half our
countries and companies and men ran half our homes.” It’s a vision of progress
that can only be calculated through the spreadsheets of labour economists,
demographers and activist groups.
We fail to
consider differences in medical specialty or type of workplace, that appearance
may well be an illusion. Surgeons and cardiologists, who have long been in the
ranks of the top-earning specialties, remain predominantly male. Meanwhile, as
women flood the profession, they disproportionately choose to become psychiatrists and paediatricians,
specialties that have always been among the least lucrative.
When you see a car broken down, do you see the
woman get out of the car in the snow to fix it? No, you see the man. When a
ship is going down, women and children get off first. Why not the men? While women want equality, they also
still desire to be pampered by men. So how does that work? They want “men’s”
jobs, want "men’s" responsibilities, yet they still expect to have
everything done for them and be waited on hand and foot.
We rightly believe whoever is the most qualified for any given task, should get it. Whether it is man, woman, black, white, native, Asian, African, whatever the case may be. We believe that everyone should be treated equally. In a majority of cases where people complain about not being treated equally, they expect to be treated better than equally. They want special treatment while claiming it is equality.
If women want "the man's job”, they should start doing everything else that men are naturally required to do. Don't take my job as the manager of the company, but expect me to lift the heavy box of stuff in your office. If they want equality, they should do it themselves.
Women desire all that is provided to men, but still expect to be treated better than men.
When women become more successful than their husbands, it hurts the male ego and this takes a toll on their marriage. The problem solely lies in the fact that men are not accustomed to staying with women who are professionally more superior to them.
So, do husbands of flourishing women cheat because they cannot tolerate
the fact that their wives receive more accolades than them? Or does the male
ego find it hard to believe that their wives are actually doing better than
them? Men often tend to get threatened when their wives earn more than them,
and that's why they prefer they stay at home. Men often look out for women who
can spend quality time at home and take care of the kids. Men prefer women with 'safe
professions’ such as that of a teacher or a librarian, or those with fixed working hours.
Though there are many men who
find successful women intimidating, there are some who are very supportive of
the fact that their wives are earning and doing well in their lives.
Minoti Panda, a 36-year-old advertising
professional says, "My husband and I often have arguments on how I should
stay back at home to look after my five-year-old daughter. I keep telling him
that she is grown up enough to complete her homework and be on her own until we
get back in the evening, but he does not seem to understand the fact." Men
often tend to get threatened when their wives earn more than them, and that's
why they prefer they stay at home.
Men
who participated in a psychological experiment weren’t even aware that their
self-esteem was affected by their partners’ performance. A man struggling on an
unconscious level with a partner’s success might suddenly act out — distancing
himself from his partner, becoming slow to return phone calls or being less
attentive.
The study involved five experiments in
which a total of 896 men and women participated. In one, a person was told that
his or her romantic partner had scored in either the top 12 percent or the
bottom 12 percent in a problem-solving test; then, the person’s self-esteem,
both explicit and implicit, was measured. In the other experiments,
participants were asked to write about social or intellectual situations in
which a partner had succeeded or failed. While all participants expressed
positive feelings about a partner’s success, the researchers determined that on
a more subtle level, a man’s self-esteem actually fell after he acknowledged
that his partner had done well.
Traditionally, men have been expected to take
the lead in a relationship, especially financially, and to be the front-runner,
said Aaron
Rochlen, a
professor who studies the psychology of men and masculinity at the University
of Texas at Austin.
But increasingly, men are no longer the
financial leaders in their relationships. This may not prove to be, as author
Hanna Rosin calls it, “The End of Men,”
but Rochlen said that among married heterosexual couples, more women are
out-earning their partners than ever. In dual-income families, 28 percent of
American wives earn more than their husbands, according
to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Many men struggle with that reality, even though they may not
admit it
Although a lot of families now realize it is important
for the woman to work too, even today, there are several limitations a woman
encounters, while balancing a career pursuit with family expectations. For
instance, it is always presumed that, with a marriage of a guy and girl from
different locations, a girl would inevitably give up her existing job and move
in with the guy to his city, and later look for a new job. This is true even in
cities and in the case of highly educated families or women. The girl always gives up the job. The guy
doesn't. (This also works conveniently in most cases,
given that the setup makes sure, the girl always earns lesser and has a
relatively inferior career to the guy even before the marriage is arranged, and
hence her career is relatively easier to disturb).
A lot of women also give up their jobs at childbirth
for an year or two, to completely focus on the child's upbringing. They might
later, look for a job again. Some never get back. Quite a few prefer otherwise
too, but again, a lot of them feel it is very important for them to give up
their jobs at least temporarily, to be able to raise their child properly. Some
unwillingly, and some sportily, have given up to the classic expectations of a
woman's role in the Indian family.
In families that cannot afford a cook, the woman mostly does all the cooking every day, and this means that, she has to have a fixed work schedule and spare enough time at home to attend to such needs. A man can get home late, not the woman.
In summary, women are beginning to take up work, more and more owing to financial pressures and improved access to education and employment opportunities, but in spirit, the Indian setup still leans chauvinistically towards having the woman sacrificing on her career and attending to the household needs. And, even in families with the more culturally independent and well-educated women, usually the woman sacrifices more of her career and takes the slow path with her needs/pressures to attend to the family, while the man can stay completely focused on his career.
In families that cannot afford a cook, the woman mostly does all the cooking every day, and this means that, she has to have a fixed work schedule and spare enough time at home to attend to such needs. A man can get home late, not the woman.
In summary, women are beginning to take up work, more and more owing to financial pressures and improved access to education and employment opportunities, but in spirit, the Indian setup still leans chauvinistically towards having the woman sacrificing on her career and attending to the household needs. And, even in families with the more culturally independent and well-educated women, usually the woman sacrifices more of her career and takes the slow path with her needs/pressures to attend to the family, while the man can stay completely focused on his career.
