Random reflections on being a Woman

                                              Random Reflections on being a Woman

Come March 8. The annual tamasha of Women’ day is organized by all elite organizations to honour women of substance (which inter alia amounts to  classifying some women as women of substance and others as of no substance) from all ranks of the society. This day is celebrated as a special day for women, of women and in many instances by women (and occasionally by a few male organizations that lend their shoulder to celebrate Eve’s event on this day).  But for most women all the nice words glorifying them are nothing new as they get repeated year after year ad nauseam because there is hardly any substantial glorification other than the words uttered.

I am a woman slowly timing my way to reach my platinum year in the next few months. I am one of the few fortunate women to have lived a fairly decent life. Amartya Sen’s Capability theory had worked well for me as I had the opportunity to realize and live up to my capability.  Sen’s Capability theory inspired the creation of the Human Development Index capturing capabilities in health, education and income. Though Sen’s theory is for all human beings, Women’s Day celebrations highlighting the lacunae in HDI in respect of women belie the effectiveness of this theory. 

Sen conceptualizes capability as a reflection of the freedom to achieve valuable functionings. Functioning comprise of what we are capable, what we want to be capable and what should we be capable to be human and to act. Thus functionings can vary from elementary things, such as being healthy, having a good job, and being safe, to more complex states, such as being happy, having self-respect, and being calm. Hence Sen focuses on the need to provide opportunity for all persons to generate  the functionings they desire or are capable of achieving .

I had the opportunity to study for a post graduate degree five decades back. I am one of the Midnight’s girls, fortunate to be at the ripe moment when India got her independence. Though it was still a patriarchal society, the men in my family- in particular, my father and my great grand father –had come under the influence of  Gandhi, Nehru, Rajaji and Bharathiar. Taking inspiration from them, they understood that freedom means freedom of choice and freedom of achievement and freedom to a person’s quality of life. So they decided that the girls in the family should be given the pride of honour of becoming first generation graduates. My sister and I were sent to college and after graduation became  the first timers in the family to take up  jobs. This was in the late ‘50s and ‘6os of the century gone by.

We grabbed the opportunity and realized our capability to achieve our potential. There may be a fairly large number of women of our age group who would have similarly risen in their respective professions. But what was the most significant aspect of our life was we blended our family life with our professional life with great ease and comfort. Maybe we were luckier than many women but the fact is we did not allow any shadow line between the two lives we lived -six hours outside and the rest at home. We had inherited our family genes to respond to the challenge of running a home and being a part of the institution we served. This realization of our enormous capacity to work tirelessly gave us remarkable physical, mental and psychic energy, well outside the possibilities defined by natural laws. Years before Sen wrote about Capability theory, we lived it in our lives.

I write this because I find words spoken from different elite platforms like this year’s theme 'inspiring change', celebrating  the social, political and economic achievements of women, while lamenting world attention on areas that still need further action, sound dull and insipid. I for one, feel embarrassed to beg the society to take me seriously, give me privileges and special opportunity to progress . It is like begging to be given special status because men are from Mars and women are from Venus! No, we both are from this planet, Earth and each of the two genders should do what it is capable of doing and not ask like a crying baby for a rattle or a lollipop. The more women ask, the more they show themselves to be weaklings and incapable of living on their naturally endowed strength. Part of the reason behind the success of women in our family is we never cribbed nor indulged in self pity to attend to household chores as well as to work outside home . It was difficult for any male member to accuse us when we made them eat out of our hands and when we were always  –in the words of a Tamil proverb- like oil before they could ask for the sesame seed.  
I recall Sai Baba’s great saying: “Everyone comes to me and asks me to ‘give’ and ‘give’, while I say ‘ take’ and ‘take’ as I have everything in abundance.” Let women recognize the power within to give in abundance and ask men (and society) to take from them rather than beg to be ‘given’ and not ‘taken’ as an equal-or more than an equal -force to be reckoned.