Just Saying
From an article in today’s DNA After Hours, titled “Coming Full Circle”:
“We might not have the statistics but it seems to be an emerging trend. Some might call it coming full circle, or some might say it is just women being comfortable with their choices, but more and more women want to quit a flourishing career to be at home.”
And in DNA’s Me Supplement, a four-page advice column on keeping a “delicious kitchen” begins with a full-page photograph of a power-dressed woman standing in her kitchen, with an open laptop and planner before her, one hand holding a cellphone stuck to her ear, the other stirring something in a pot, with assorted vegetables, pots and pans on the counter, and an incredibly got-it-all-together look on her face. It begins:
“First of all, stop thinking of kitchen work as boring chores. However much we may progress, a woman remains Annapoorna - the one who fulfils. There is nothing more pampering and pleasurable to her soul than to be the Goddess of Comfort to her family.”
The same issue of After Hours has an interview with a journalist who mentions, among other things, the “ferocious work ethics” of a businessman.
I am just saying.
Have you checked out this piece? It shows — with lots of evidence, unlike the only by the lazy Sandhya Menon — that the opt-out myth is just that: a myth?
Comment by Abi — April 1, 2007 @ 7:36 am
Heh. Abi, thanks for the link :)
Charu (comment below) you’re behind the times! (Hey, are you back in Bombay?)
Comment by Uma — April 1, 2007 @ 7:46 am
i havent seen the article but from you describe, the piture is incomplete… no smug babies crawling around? what sort of woman role model is DNA pushing? I wonder… did you happen to be reading Womne’s Era actually and not DNA?
Comment by Charu — April 1, 2007 @ 10:48 am
Uma! Oh no - look what you made me do! Now I have to clean the vomit that’s all over the keyboard.
Abi, thanks for the article on the Opt-Out Revolution. As always, will plug Rhona Mahony’s book “Kidding Ourselves” that has some good explanations of why women are more likely to leave the workforce once they have children.
And I totally agree with the cognitive dissonance explanation. No woman is going to say that she didn’t “choose” to stay at home but instead was pushed out by a combination of inflexible workforce policies and a traditional society/partner who expects mothers to do all the work. It would be too damaging to keep feeling resentful about it all. I don’t know why there aren’t studies that use implicit attitude measures towards opting-out instead of self-reports.
n!
Comment by n! — April 1, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
I agree with the comments above - the super woman myth is nothing but just that - a myth. I think the link Abi provided says it all - it is more of being pushed out than opting out. But obviously the “pushed out reality” never makes it to the headlines, since the “opt out myth” actually reinforces age-old traditional “choices” supposedly made by women!
Comment by Emma — April 1, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
Yeah, and we are also just “opting” to be harassed and treated as inferior.
Comment by Alankrita — July 4, 2007 @ 3:55 pm