Geetanjali Krishna: Conquest of yet another male bastion

A couple of days before Women’s Day, I was surprised to hear that a woman I know, who works as a private nurse, had suddenly given up her job. As per the grapevine, she hadn’t given it up for something that offered better prospects, but because she wanted to stay at home and be a “proper” wife and mother. Her efficiency and empathetic disposition had impressed me, so I wondered why she quit her job after over a decade of work. Coincidentally, I ran into her yesterday and asked her what had happened. Her answer was unexpected. 

“Our eldest son is getting married,” she said. “It won’t be right for me to work with a daughter-in-law living in the house with us.” What did the coming of the daughter-in-law have to do with her giving up her job, I asked. She replied that they had to uphold the family tradition, which decreed that the daughters-in-law didn’t go out to work. “By God’s grace, the family is well off and all the men are in good jobs,” she said. “So, it’s a matter of prestige for the family back home in our village in Bihar that their women don’t need to work.”

All this was well, I said, except for the little matter of her having been a nurse for the last decade or so. She looked uncomfortable but soldiered on with her reply: “My in-laws still don’t know that I work… They won’t understand how things are in Delhi.” Had she lived in the village, she said, she’d never have dared to venture out. Everything would change now that her own status was changing.” All these years, I was a daughter-in-law… now finally, I’ll be a mother-in-law,” she said. “So, of course I’ll have to behave like one!”

Consequently, when their son’s marriage was fixed, she demanded that the daughter-in-law live with them for the first few months, even though the son, who’s in the army, lives in Punjab. She was determined to show the young girl, a graduate, the family’s ways and traditions, even though it meant pretending she’d never worked outside her house.

I listened to her with a growing sense of disbelief. Why would she make substantial life changes just to paint an artificial picture of their family traditions to a young girl? Perhaps, I asked, she would miss not having an income of her own. “I will miss that,” she said thoughtfully. “Earning my own money and being good at my job gave me a lot of confidence.” I wondered aloud why she wanted to deny her young daughter-in-law that same privilege of freedom. In response, she told me that she started working only after her youngest child had completed school. “Till then, I stayed at home and looked after their every need,” she said. “Of course, I want the mother of my future grandchildren to do the same.” 

When I still looked unconvinced, she came up with the kicker: “You see, higher education has given today’s girls the false idea that they’re equal to men,” she said. “If I allow her to work, she could become too big for her boots! That’s why I’m going to ‘train’ her from day one.” 

Not surprisingly, I spent all of Women’s Day thinking about her, and what lay in store for her future daughter-in-law. With women like her to further the rules of patriarchy upon the next generation, I mused glumly while being assailed by chirpy Women’s Day messages on social media — it seemed that my gender had conquered yet another male bastion.