You got to
admit that it’s been an “interesting” time for women. Ever since a certain US
presidential candidate bragged about “Grabbing them by the p***sy,” the world
headlines have been filled with stories of how men in power have been abusing
women. The rich, powerful and famous like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and
Kevin Spacy have all been felled by charges of sexually abusing people. This
momentum against sexual harassment is known as “#MeToo” and only those living
under a stone would not have heard of it by now.
It's good that
these abuses are coming to light. Nobody should be subject to being harassed at
the work place and people who abuse their position to get “sexual services”
should be treated in the same manner as people who abuse their said position for
money.
However, while
the Harvey Weinstein cases of the world grab headlines, the real issue that is
screwing up women lies closer to home and the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world
are merely large symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. The
real enemy that all women have are their mothers. Philip Larkin’s “They f** you
up, your mum and dad, they don’t mean to but they do,” has never been more apt
when it comes to what our parenting does to our girls.
There is an
argument to say that this is cultural. There is a common argument in anthropology
that states that societies are based on the exchange of women. For example,
daughters are inevitably married off to build alliances. One of the hallmarks
of “marriage” that most traditional of institutions is the establishment of the
ownership of the children in the marriage to the man’s family. The man is “head
the household.” Traditional family structures have it such that men go out to
earn the household income and women stay at home to look after the house. If
you look at household income, its usually the man who makes more. In this scenario,
it was understood that a man could “relax” at home because he was the one who “supported”
the family and in “traditional” families, education of boys was a priority
because it was an investment in the chap bringing home the proverbial bacon
whilst the girl was going to marry out anyway.
However, women
have been playing a greater role in earning the family income. In Singapore, we’ve
gone from a situation where a wife who stays at home is now luxury rather than
the expectation within a generation. However, whilst the woman’s contribution
to the household income has grown, the same is not necessarily true of the man’s
contribution to the creation of a good home.
I take a former
brother-in-law as an example He is the pride and joy of the family because he
managed to get himself a good job with one of the statutory boards and
throughout his career, he’s been sent on all sorts of courses. He is, what you’d
call the ultimate Singapore success story.
However, this
is a guy who can’t clean up after himself. You’re talking about a guy who will
happily much on his MacDonald’s meal at home and leave the wrapping on the
table for someone else to put into the dustbin, which happened to be located
behind him. All he had to do was to twist his body and drop it there.
My former
brother-in-law’s inability to put his trash into the bin should be blamed on my
former mother-in-law who did everything for him and the counter argument is –
why I am bothered because he’s managed to get an “iron rice-bowl” with the
government. My former mother-in-law, can argue that whilst she may have
pampered him, she saw to it that he became a “good guy” who could bring home
the bacon.
This a mild
case. If you look at many of the societies that are stuck in poverty, you’ll
notice that one of the key reasons why they’re stuck in poverty is because the “development
aid” has been focused on men, when it is in fact the women using the income for
productive things like food an education. I think of a non-related Vietnamese
girl I know who stopped giving money to her brothers because they were spending
it on booze. Then, she had to stop giving money to her mother because her
mother was giving it to her brothers.
The question
remains, why do parents (particularly mothers) focus on giving so much to the
boys when the truth is that it’s the girls who are taking care of them. This
has not been good for society at large as can be seen in the following article:
https://aquila-style.com/blue-eyed-boys-why-do-many-mothers-spoil-their-sons-even-into-adulthood/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QDlv8kfwIM
Whilst having
more women reach the top can serve as an inspiration for other women, its
ground up initiatives like this ad that work towards clearing gender bias in
the work place and beyond. When you have top-down solutions you risk creating “Drawing
up the draw bridge syndrome” where the few women at the top end up making life
more difficult for women on the way up in order to preserve the status as “the
only girl at the table.” However, when you have ground-up solutions like this,
you create a culture where men and women are willing to share the load in the house
and work place. When men and women share the load, a lady becoming CEO is a “so-what,”
because it becomes normal to people at large. Ending gender bias is not a sprint
– it’s a marathon.
No comments
Post a Comment