Saturday, February 27, 2016

Gender Bias Be Gone!

Mine is a nuclear family, comprising of Mom, Dad and me. I have been brought up in a very congenial atmosphere. I have never seen a real fight between my parents. They do argue sometimes, arguments turning to heated ones but then those have never created any serious rifts between the two. I was quite a social butterfly right since childhood. A friend or two would always be there at home most of the time. At times, my friends would come to my home straight from school. We were used to spending time at my house. My parents ensured to provide ample space for everyone at home. I was never restricted to anything right since the beginning. Probably that brought an extra ounce of maturity in me ahead of anyone else among my peers.

My mother is the Principal in a government college. My father is a businessman. Both have entirely different time schedules. On one hand, my mother has fixed timings mostly. Hardly ever has she observed a shift from routine owing to unexpected workload. On the other hand, my father has long and unpredictable timings right since the beginning. It has happened many times that when Mom is at home, Dad is away and when Dad is at home, Mom is at work. My mother’s work doesn’t require much of travel outside the city. My father’s business required a lot of travel right since the start. One thing that is admired by my friends about my father is his emotion, affection, and love towards home and family.

Right since my childhood my friends have seen my father working in the kitchen many-a-times, preparing food. Earlier I used to see him speed-dialing Mom asking how much salt is to be put in the vegetables he is preparing, for how much time they are to be boiled, how many whistles of steam cooker are to be observed etc. But gradually he became an expert, as expert as a Master chef. He never hesitated to do all this in front of my friends when we were kids. In fact, many of my friends would go home and tell their parents about this. On one occasion, one of my friend's father tried to make a mockery of my father openly saying he does the work that the lady of the house is supposed to do. My father, plain-faced, asked him a question that silenced him with shame in his eyes. My father asked, if one's home, family, spouse, kids and the likes belong to oneself, how come the onus of household responsibilities falls on the women of the house, solely? That day onward my friends’ admiration and respect towards my father grew leaps and bounds, as he was firmly questioning the notion of gender bias and adopting a praiseworthy practice to #ShareTheLoad. ​He has never shied away from lending a helping hand at home and I am proud of the fact that my family is one of the few to realize and object to such silent prejudice being practiced against the women of our nation amid closed walls. This too, is a burden which needs to be shunned and it is of utmost importance to let Gen Next observe what must be supported as right and what must be discarded as wrong.

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I am joining the Ariel #ShareTheLoad campaign at BlogAdda and blogging about the prejudice related to household chores being passed on to the next generation.

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