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We are still not sure how many of the changes that covid brought into our lives will stay in the long run. Statistics coming from across the world show that fewer women are returning to work. It is not worth the trouble, says another friend, who had declared in 2019 that retirement was not on her mind at all. She says she enjoyed being with the children and taking care of her family so much, that going back to the rush of back to back meetings does not enamour her.
Families have downsized homes, moved to the suburbs, demanded and received work from home benefits, settled for lower salary since work-life balance mattered the most, but giving the job up to become single-income homes, seems to be extreme in my mind. But this is the trend that is now being documented in many countries.
Women choosing to not have a career is not new. For more than a decade, studies of workforce composition have been pointing to the trend of top percentile households converting into single income families. As income and stock options grew, the really wealthy earners chose to return to the orthodox division of labour for the household. Women gave up their careers firmly opining that the income of the husband was more than adequate for the household. The other rungs now seem to join this privileged class.
Data shows that girls systematically do better than boys at schools. Academic performance score cards have girls’ names dominantly written in the top slots. Gone are the times when engineering and management schools had just a couple of girls in a class full of boys. At campus placements and at induction training classrooms, there is simply no gender gap in salary, in roles and in performance targets.
Things change when the girls become wives, and then mothers. While women have long shared the burden of the household economy, the responsibility of running the household, putting food on the table and caring for the members of the household disproportionately fall on women. When they have a baby, the child care responsibility is fully on the mother. Many women fall off the ladder when they prioritize child care over career. Now that has spilled to self care and women want to be kinder to themselves.When my mother and mother in law went to work, they chose to be school teachers. It was convenient, they said. The hours, vacations and fixed location helped. They managed home and work. They took the help of the extended family for childcare; older siblings chipped in. But these women would not dream of giving up their jobs. The family needed the income; most of them simply handed their pay cheques to the husband.When women of my generation went to work, we began to choose careers that aligned with our aspirations and education. The family still needed the second income to live a life of comfort, but we cherished the economic independence immensely. We had the agency and power to organize our lives the way we desired, because we pursued a career that brought us satisfaction and paid us well. We hired help where needed; we persuaded our men to chip in; and we ploughed through the challenges.
That determination of having it all, while internally struggling to balance life and work, and manage the stress at office and home, left many of us unhappy with what we saw as inequality towards women. Workplace cultures were driven by men; performance standards were men-centric; households refused to let go of old gender roles and so on. Women routinely faced discrimination even in otherwise good work and home environments, and put up with exploitation and abuse in the worst cases.
Somewhere women seem to have stopped negotiating for themselves. It seems like many have decided to quit the game in the interest of their physical and mental health and the well being of their families. They prefer to give up work and let go of the perks and power of having an independent career, without apology. This is becoming perhaps a firm preference for self preservation.
Why should it be so tough for women to pursue careers and to seek purpose in their lives beyond the confines of their homes? Why are issues of women’s health and child care not receiving the institutional support on the scale it so deserves? Why don’t we make it easier for women to work and balance their lives? Why are we tilting the scales of decision making at corporations, institutions, government and households in favour of men, just when we have begun to formally acknowledge the benefits of gender diversity at these places?
The demonstration effect and social impacts of this trend of the new stay-at-home mom, is also sadly adding a snob value to this choice. Women are signaling that they are able to stay at home because they can afford it. The stylish, well-informed and well-traveled stay at home mom with her retinue of household staff and perks, has now begun to look at the career woman with undisguised pity. That turn of the tables is somewhat alarming.
A personal finance columnist and a woman like me is somewhat puzzled with these developments. The icons in my mind are women who are out there changing the world for the better. They enjoy doing what they empower themselves to do, and the monetary rewards are well worth the effort. Their families and the society benefit from that role, I would think. Personal finances of half of the world’s households are stable, sensible, long-term- oriented and diversified, with women participating actively.
Are these new trends good for women?Aren’t they making their choices after giving it considerable thought? Shouldn’t they be pursuing happiness in a form that appeals to them? Haven’t they rejected what did not work for them? Then why am I not able to celebrate this visible trend? Am I so trapped in my own assumptions of what women must do? is this the answer to the erstwhile farce of the superwoman? Or have women simply given up? I tell myself that the pendulum will swing to the other end before finding balance. I hope it does.
(The author is CHAIRPERSON, CENTRE FOR INVESTMENT EDUCATION AND LEARNING.)
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