Gender (in)equations
charukesi April 4th, 2005
Just finished reading The Female Eunuch - at first read, the book sure packs a punch - ‘full of bile and insight’ says a review on the blurb - and the bile kind of spills over from the pages on to your hands…
It must have made tremendous sense for the time in which it was written - but I could not fully comprehend the resentment and anger behind some of the sentiments expressed by Greer…
I am not saying that gender equations have changed dramatically in the last few decades making this set of essays completely irerelevant - just that somehow, today, the bra-burning, man-bashing kind of feminism seems so misplaced…
While on this, have been seeing lots of media bytes recently on the ‘women - different?’ theme - brain composition, career issues, the works… In her blog, Rashmi Bansal has reproduced the piece she has recently written for BusinessWorld - MBA Women…
And in the same issue of BusinessWorld, Mahesh Murthy in his regular column ‘on the contrary’ writes about ‘the era of disposable jobs - a rant about young people not taking their careers (and corporate responsibilities) seriously… He writes (emphasis mine), they are all typically SEC A. Typically from well-off families where the parents worked hard to get these kids where they are. And a large number of them, sadly, seem to be female‘
Uh? This because one young SEC A type (what exactly is SEC A type - in eight years in market research, I have not been able to figure this out) female rejected his job offer and did not bother to inform him of her decision, suddenly their emerges a ‘typical’ group - comprising typically females…?
And what does this say about the other thousands of young women who do take their careers seriously and do not live off their parents’ money ?
Which is essentially what the Business World cover story points out - that women have to work doubly hard and more to get to the top - and still put up with nay sayers on her way… Seems to me things have not changed much since Greer’s times….?