Will Women's Day be happy?

With women’s day around the corner, I am tempted to write about ‘married men’. Paradoxical indeed! Almost all marriages in the west are on an equal footing, which isn’t the case in our country most of the times (exceptional husbands are not targeted here). The normal practice of a husband considering his wife to be his inferior is very common, not confined to rural, but urban couples as well. 

It’s the wife who must bear the brunt of all the house hold chores, especially if the husband is the bread winner of the family. She is expected to be at his beck and call, who ironically is supposed to ‘provide’ for the entire family. But it’s the wife who ends up ‘providing’ for everybody in terms of all their needs. This applies to a wife who is a career woman too. She must walk the tight rope of work and marriage constantly.

Why is a man always put on a pedestal? Gender disparity between a girl and a boy is ingrained right from childhood. Unfortunately, it’s the boy who is given all the privileges at home. And this disparity, rubs on his marriage too. He continues to feel superior and presumes he can get away with anything. The wife in most cases is also conditioned into believing and accepting the supremacy of the husband. It is a given that she must comply by his rules.

Inappropriately, the husband’s family keeps reiterating his role as the master of the family. Nothing can be more ironic than the parents of a son, who also have a daughter, continuing to daunt the daughter-in-law by their unreasonable means. They forget their daughter too could be subjected to such unfairness. Or maybe, they consider it normal for their daughter to live within the framework of an unfair marriage. Not to forget the mother in the mother-in-law who was once a daughter and a wife too.

Times are changing, but it’s still far from a fair and ideal society, wherein the man and the woman can grow equally in a marriage. 

We do have husbands who treat their wives equally. But the statistic is too less to change the reality. Women have started asserting their right to equality leading to many broken marriages. Men must realize that they are ordinary men and not supermen to expect super wives and not super women. Happy women’s day!