The 'rich' Indian heritage and legacy spanning across epochs has also seen the systematic fine-tuning of women's position. The status women 'enjoy' in the Indian society today is by and large a product of certain gender and certain people maintaining that high ground that they have been accustomed to sitting at in all this time.
Ever been to a friend's house and seen how its always the M's of the family who keep company and converse with guests while the F's are relegated to the interiors, making periodic appearances as required to serve the food and answer a few questions perhaps.
That's still a 'once in a while' instance, but what about the regular practice where the M's strictly keep to the drawing room and the bed-room and the business in all other parts of the house are any way none of their concern. There is no change in the script even if the F's are employed outside of their homes. The F's are the first to wake and the last to sleep, of course this is not factoring in the late night movies and sports that the M's stay awake to catch.
The F's who stay at home, keeping the house, cooking, laundering, raring their young's are called housewives and like that was impolite, the turn of the century saw that word smoothened out to a home maker. But if the M's do not go out to work, they are either between jobs or retired, never anything else. Probably not so long ago, they would have been called 'unemployed' but not anymore.
Many M's in the animal kingdom have to earn their right to F's. That has been taken care of in the name of culture and civilisation, which ensures that no matter what the deficiency, every M will be matched to an F. There are negative words for all adjectives but ever heard of 'immarriageable'? This goes against the laws of nature. Some M's are best left alone.
The system perfected over the ages requires the young ones to be taken care of by the parents and the system provides the way out of the pain of it. Those F's that are not killed as a foetus are married 'away' with prayers that she should never return. Uprooted from her current existence, she tries everything within her means to cope as she is taught to discover divinity in the creature she is married to and is also taught that woes derived from the new divine are a product of her destiny and any murmurs of protest tarnishes the repute of her former support system to whom she is taught to carry a debt to grave and any mention of the legal option, disreputes her and she lives on with regret.
There are changes that have come about with time, the healthcare and hygiene technology has improved, but to what extent the improvements reach majority of the Fs is a separate discussion. Improved self-image that financial independence brings is still so fragile as to account for nothing. F's who outlive their mates, don't die on his pyre anymore but are made to feel the shame of having outlived him every day.
What is saddening is not that enough is not being done to set things right, but no one realises there is something wrong with the system. The education system, the government, the teachings of the new age pundits does nothing to sensitise people on the injustice. Imprisoned as 'shakthi, the power in temples and bound to the shackles of age old customs and traditions at homes, all F's are undoubtedly children of a lesser God.
