Project 365: Day 28 — The Place of Women

I’m currently reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, in which she talks about impediments to women taking up leadership roles.

In her introductory chapter she talks about how there are so many things that we as a generation take for granted. For example, I was always raised with a sense of responsibility that I would have my own identity. But along with that, there were also factors like I would be another person’s responsibility once I was married. I’ve always had a fundamental problem with this someone else being responsible for a woman’s decisions bit. First, it’s the parents, followed by the husband after marriage. So when exactly does the woman come into her own?

There’s a lot of pertinent points she makes in the opening chapter itself about how sociocultural norms in different places also dictate how women must behave or ate treated. For example, the rights of women in India would be vastly different from those of women in Saudi Arabia. But I believe the larger point is about what a woman’s place is. Not every woman is ambitious, the same way not every woman dreams of being the perfect homemaker. Most of us come with limited economic constraints that require us to juggle the two roles from time to time. In such cases, there’s rarely an option even though we’d love to choose one and forego the other. But barring the financial considerations, the right to choose must be the woman’s only. Society, family or workplace norms should have no role in any of it. I know that there’s a huge irony in that statement, but what I’m trying to say is that those choices are hers to make and no one else has the right to dictate those just because “as a woman she’s expected to discharge certain duties”. Freedom of choice is real equality. Else it’s just blackmail or moral policing.

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