The future is unisex
So we stopped killing baby girls and no longer high-five at Sati sites. We let our daughters stay out late as long as they text us on an hourly basis. And there is the #MeToo comet that makes silent suffering a thing of the past... But how far has the Indian Eve come really?
She has battles today that are very different from her mother’s or grandmother’s. No longer branded a vamp for wanting a nuclear set-up, she leaves her family just as he leaves his. The daughters-in-law of the joint families of yore bringing in garam-garam rotis are replaced by Swiggy.
She joins the workforce because she wants to—financial independence has much to recommend it. Those who marry young do so with a sheepish grin.
A rich husband is no longer a catch, a job that pays is. No one says ‘wake up early because you are a girl’ or ‘good girls never raise their voice’ or ‘girls should study and earn less than husbands’ anymore.
Inheritance laws are being rewritten to include egalitarian nuances and divorces leave behind a divorcé as much as a divorcée.
While this frees up women to shuffle into traditionally male ground and not have to cry at rom-coms, it also allows men to sashay into so-called feminine roles at work, keep house, change nappies and generally not miss their moustache.
Where workplaces were openly hostile to women because they had a uterus, now they are eager to appear anti-sexist and discuss maternity leave and work-from-home options with a straight face. Pay parity is no longer a sci-fi scenario.
At least lip service is paid to similar salaries for both sexes, a piety that may translate into practice one day.
Which brings us to the ultimate unequal playground: marriage. Wives routinely rebel against the second shift, which is housework and doing the school projects for children after returning from a hectic day at work.
Sheer drudgery is erotic no more. Ads do not show women washing clothes with a manic grin. Rearing kids is a real job. Extra-marital affairs involve as many husbands as wives. And domestic violence occasionally claims a male victim.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t have a long way to go still. We continue to worry more about she-travellers than he, even though accident tolls hold no such gender bias.
We will still be the second female prime minister of India if elected tomorrow, while no one calls Narendra Modi the 13th male PM.
Men are just doctors, architects and boxers; only women are female docs, female electricians and female golfers. Our gender still merits a mention. It is something others will bring up now and then even if it is to flatter.
Gender-bender attire and a swap of provider-nurturer roles are on the rise. Cafes and bars are open to all who can pay.
Men with nose-pins and women with crew-cuts are toiling hard against the visual politics of gender. Differences are blurring outside in.
The idea is to make gender slowly less visible, to adjust contrasts.
Really, except in bed how does it matter what somebody’s sex is?
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