The weirdness starts with the label. Working Woman. I am sure you must have heard of Working Man. You get the idea. Right?
Being a woman is easy but being a working woman is bizarre in its own way
Being a woman is easy but being a working woman is bizarre in its own way. You get to hear things that your brain goes like, ‘Is that even a thing?’. Well, let’s talk about 5 such things.
Why do you need to work when your husband earns decent enough?
I have been asked this time and again by many people. Noone has ever asked the same question to my husband. We have fed generations with the thought that men should work and women should spend that hard earned money. If the couple decides to do it, that’s their decision but why a generalised thought for everyone?
Also, people who say it unapologetically, have they heard about passion for work, financial independence? I doubt, they have.
You can be a working woman now. After the wedding, you should stop working to take care of the family.
How many times do you think a man was asked this? I reckon zero. Our subconscious defies the fact that men and women are equally capable of taking care of anyone. Home is the first place where equal responsibilities start and our society conditions us for inequality. Little girls are taught to play ‘House’ where they act to be a homemaker and women are told to say goodbye to their career in order to care for the family.
How will the home run if you go to work?
Making a home perfect is not just a woman’s responsibility. I was reminded multiple times to learn cooking (to be able to feed my future family) by many people other than my parents because somehow the society thought that cooking holds more priority than anything else. To some extent, It does. It is life critical to learn the skill so that you don’t die because of hunger. But, there is a twist. None of those people reminded the same to my brother. Why? I will leave this to you to ponder.
Don’t ask for more responsibility at work. It gets hard to focus on family.
Only 13% of the women make to boards of public traded companies in India as per WEF Gender gap report. Of course, there are bigger factors behind this imparity but one will not be very motivated if reminded every time about work-life balance. The truth is that work-life imbalance is not gender-specific and there is an improvement needed in company policies to achieve that.
Coming back to my point, some of us like to take responsibility because we are passionate about work and want to give our heart and soul to it and the un-solicited reminders don’t help.
Why are you so passionate about work?
Why are you passionate about something when one day you have to take care of a baby? The second version of the question is, ‘Will you continue work after the baby is born?’. Have you heard anyone asking this to a man? No. Because, we believe so much in gender equality.
I fail to understand how being passionate about your work comes in the way of roles you take as a person. It should be the guiding factor instead.
If We ever want a gender neutral society, We should stop saying such things to girls and women
According to some, these can be mere suggestions but I think they impact the thought process of an individual. They represent our society and if We ever want a gender-neutral society, We should stop saying such things to girls and women and let them decide what is best for them.
Being woman, If you have heard more strange things, share it in comments and if you are a man reading this, I am interested to know ‘weird things you hear as working man’. 
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