I was determined to visit rural India on work, leaving my children behind without feeling guilty. I returned two weeks later with an overwhelming sense of guilt and faced sharp criticism from various quarters. Where is gender diversity in the workplace and community if the family structure and social conditioning have not been sensitised, and women beat themselves up for not achieving satisfactory work-life balance?
The minute the news spread in the villages that I was a mother of three kids, I was bombarded with questions. Madam, are you divorced? Are your children living in a boarding school? Did your husband give you permission to leave your home? Who is doing the cooking and cleaning at home? And the question that was voiced the most: Who is taking care of your children?
Rural women struggle to place us real urban women in their daily lives. Most of these women don't study past middle school, get married one day after their 18th birthday (blatant lie, 16 years would be the norm), and have children at a young age with limited access to quality health care. Women opt for birth control or family planning options in a limited way. Most village sub-health centres are little more than holes in the wall, lack electricity and water, and are inadequately staffed. Many rural women prefer a home-delivery with the familiar dai (midwife). This allows them to be back on their feet faster while attending to the younger children and work at home.
These women are silent role models, multi-tasking more than the urban women, who may have the luxury of their maids to fall back on. They are casual labourers and field workers who also double up and manage all the work in their homes. Their mindset is also conditioned by the stereotypical portrayal of women in the popular media. The educated, working woman is a conundrum to them. Trust me; I was not the only one unleashing survey questions, their questions often left me speechless. This bright young 16-year-old girl asked me, "What's the point of studying and becoming like you? There are no jobs for women around here and we have to leave our children behind as well." The personal guilt trip was just building up. The lack of an adequate support system for the rural working women was quite apparent.
Sometimes, an element of frustration would creep in, losing objectivity, over the passive accounting of lack of ambition. I felt like screaming, "What kind of women are you?" Realisation dawned that they don't have a choice here and their role models are limited. The social structure, local leadership and the government have robbed them of their right to dream. After talking with numerous groups of adolescent girls in Madhya Pradesh, there might have been one or two stand-out responses on future aspiration. For now, the young girls just want to wear sequinned saris, expensive jewellery, get married, make babies and fight with their mothers-in-law just like they do in their favourite soap operas.
Urban educated women who chase their ambitions in a quest for identity wear the multi-tasker armour with a sense of pride, but still experience personal grief for not achieving the perfect work-life balance. I am not saying the urban working women should not experience guilt. This conflict, however, should be individualistic, and not dominated by a herd mentality. The guilt complex of the working women is influenced by an element of social conditioning by the family, co-workers and women at large. It is important to voice the stress, of striking a work-life balance. When did voicing the need for a supportive environment translate into a sense of personal flogging over inadequacies? This is a socially induced guilt phenomenon.
Towards the end of the two-week trip, I was alerted that "mothers should not leave their children for these many days during their formative years". This was shocking. Do people ask male suits if they spend sufficient time during the formative years of their children's life? Why should working women alone walk around with a cloud of guilt? In some cases, it's an enforced sense of motherly angst, of course. Please let working mothers miss their children in the way they want to, not according to current social expectations. For example, stop telling your female colleagues with children that you don't know they balance everything in their lives. While the appreciation and sensitivity is applauded, pause for a second to think if you would say the same to a male colleague with children. Men talk about not spending quality time with their family in the way they want to; indulge women in a similar fashion. That will better define gender equality.
Most importantly, women should let other women find their own comfort zone in striking that work-life balance in the workplace and community, and in rural and urban India. It is time to lose the mob mentality and remove the invisible yoke. In fact, four trips later, sometimes to reported Maoist-activity areas, and after many public and personal debates about "what kind of woman are you?", I would say: not guilty.
The author is a Programme Manager at the National CSR Hub at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
