Essay On Women Place In The Modern World

Essay On Women Place In The Modern World

Many women are greatly disturbed by their lot as women i h this changing world. They are becoming painfully conscious of the fact that there is something basically wrong with woman's place illthe modern world. The English suffragettes claimed that they had broken the panes of the kitchen and emancipated women. But the question is, are women really emancipated?. Is the place of workwomen in society today basically different from that of women of past centuries?.

We find career women everywhere. We find professional women amidst us. There are women doctors, women lawyers, women teachers. women engineers, women business executives. Women compete with men in every segment of human life. Going a step further, women have equal rights with men. They have voting rights as well. Women have ventured into fields where many men dare not travel. A Russian woman astronaut has successfully orbited outer space. All these we accept taking all for granted.

Although \ \ omen have made great progress in education and have contributed their service in different fields of life, the contention is that the basic attitude of society towards women has not changed radically so that women are not able to play their proper role to the fullest measure in society. We often hear of women complaining of the dullness and loneliness of staying at home and looking after children. Many a married woman has to give up her career after marriage. Nowadays we hear people talking of kitchen education for women. It means education in domestic science.

Is domestic science a refined term for kitchen education? There are educationists who talk of giving girls an education different from that of boys. I begin to doubt seriously whether women are as emancipated as they claim to be. Many women deliberately deceive themselves by thinking they are free and enjoy equal rights with men. The word -emancipation" becomes meaningful only if we care to ask "From what do women want to be emancipated?

The emancipation of women, to my mind, should be from men, and from old ideas and traditional views on their role in society. Only when women succeed in freeing themselves from these force will they find their proper place in the world.

Nowadays it is fashionable for men to talk eloquently about freedom and equality for women. This is insincere talk. Ask any man to remain at home, cook, wash dishes, scrub the floor, and do a
dozen other everyday chores. At once they retort, This is not a man's job -- it is the work of women". Straight-away they imprison women, 'Your place is in the home; my place is outside, they claim, They emphasize the biological role of workmen to bear and feed children. Men, without any exception, treat women as the weaker sex'. There is a complete identity in the attitudes of men and society towards women's place and role in the community.

It is true that the biological role of women is to bear children' but with the progress of science, children could be fed out of milk bottles. So the question of feeding the children is solved. Even then if women elect to spend as much of their time outside as men, the outraged voices of men will shout women back into their homes again. By feeding the children out of the bottle the biological limitation on women's activity outside home can be partly overcome.

Not content with that, people raise the question of children losing maternal love. It confounds me why children should have twenty four hours of maternal love and barely four hours of paternal love. Why not the other way, or for a change, why not equal hours of maternal and paternal love?

The charge that women are the weaker sex is not generally true. Strength and courage are partly qualities of the mind, and women have proved that they have these qualities in abundance. In the remote past women were as strong and as brave as men and they ranged along side men in the forests and countryside engaged in hunting the animals in the forest.

Women are deliberately suppressed by men in their present position in society. They are forced all the time narrow confines of their homes. Public opinion is much against women spending most of their time outside their homes. Women, in my opinion, have not yet achieved their emancipation.

In the modern world, with opportunities for higher education, women have a dual role to play; one inside the home, and the other in the community in which they live. According to Dr. Barbara Castle, women should try to take a keen interest in, and play in active role in, life outside their home so as to avoid the drudgery, loneliness and disillusion that may set in the latter part of their married life when their children are grown up and leave them to live on their own. the opportunity de Beaviour. a world leading feminist writer, states that in this changing world there should be a new era of partnership between men and women - a partnership in which both are protectors and home builders together. It is out of tune with the trend of time to give women only the job of nest building and home keeping. The attitude of men that "Always I shall bring the bacon and you shall do the cooking " should undergo a revolutionary chan3e. The changed outlook should be " Let us both being the bacon and let us both do the cooking.

Only when men and society at large accept this view, can the emancipation of women become a reality. Society should begin to think of women first as human beings, and then only as women. Women should be given the opportunity and freedom to spend a few hours away from the home, to engage themselves in some kind of work in the community so as to keep away the feeling of frustration and loneliness that may arise if they remain within the walls of the home all the time.

Humanity will achieve its highest and noblest ideas only if men cease to treat women as their property and regard

them as equals.