Why women put up with violence
By Amrit Pal Tiwana
"WHAT counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog." How correct was Dwilight D. Eisenhower is saying so! Raksha Pathak, active and bold, withered within a few years due to domestic violence, but could not bring herself to walk out of marriage all her life. Why?

A mother’s dilemma!
By Neelu Kang
IT is believed that motherhood is the culmination of a woman’s hopes, dreams and ambitions. It is not only supposed to be a woman’s natural destiny but the most honoured and exalted role. It is widely felt that to miss being a mother is to miss the most precious experience life holds for a woman.

• Womanspeak
  
  

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Why women put up with violence
By Amrit Pal Tiwana

"WHAT counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog." How correct was Dwilight D. Eisenhower is saying so! Raksha Pathak, active and bold, withered within a few years due to domestic violence, but could not bring herself to walk out of marriage all her life. Why?

Mehak, an airhostess, left her job to be with her husband in his transferable job. She was blessed with two sweet kids in quick succession but very soon due to domestic violence, got transformed into a cowering wreck who felt almost immobilised into a state of indecision and inaction. While not allowed to meet her parents and friends, she was also served the ultimatum that if she ever dared to step out in search for a job, she would never be allowed to return to her matrimonial home. She was threatened that her children would be snatched away from her and be sent abroad, to be subsequently told that their mother had died so that she could never meet them again all her life.

The people wondered why, despite her education, she was so silly as not to walk out of such a violent marriage.

But why? It baffles many people, specially youngsters who consider such a supine attitude contemptible and bewildering. Isn’t it as bad to tolerate injustice and cruelty as to perpetrate it? They ask this with indignant surprise.

First and foremost, the question is, out of it, where to? It is like the proverbial, "out of the frying pan, into the fire."

She is suffocated for space in a violent marriage, but we, as a society too, don’t give any space to her. Our social set-up makes up quite a closed system, hardly keen to give respite to such unfortunate and harassed women. There is no infrastructure worth the name to support her even emotionally if she tries to break free from this vicious prison.

Other women eye her suspiciously and avoid her while men mostly take her for easy sport. This social rejection is killing and the prospect is daunting, compelling her to continue undergoing subhuman treatment.

She knows that if nothing else has killed her spirit, this will certainly do so. Being maliciously branded a wicked woman scares her a lot for it is not easy to carry the cross of this undue condemnation. Very few people possess the strength to put up with ubiquitous rejection.

Moreover, a woman who is shattered and psychologically smothered, certainly needs a stronger hand to first prepare her to come out of the scaring hallucinations about her own insufficiency. But most of us prefer to look the other way, leaving her to her own broken oars and torn sails.

Sadly enough, she is mostly not welcome even in her parental home. As an occasional guest, yes, but as a permanent fixture, no, unless the family is very well off and extra caring. As it is, the parents call her paraya dhan and the in-laws call her parayi beti. So where does she belong? She is neither here not there, she is an outsider everywhere, flitting across life like a shadow in the twilight zones of no-man’s land.

Third, we have double standards. In fact, we have two sets of standards, one for ourselves and the other for the rest of the world, especially the vulnerable part of it that we can lord over conveniently. Flexibility is there nowadays, but it is mostly for ourselves alone. While for ourselves, most of us want to have the 21st century concepts and benefits applied to us, for others we want the 18th century values and concepts to be imposed most rigorously and if they dare to transgress them, we simply sit in judgement upon them, treating them like guttersnipes devoid of any values or scruples. With gay abandon, we frequently use our tongues to slash and hurt them.

Moreover, the worry about the future of the children also makes her weak in the knees. Where will the children go? What will they do? These questions eat her out, weighing her down like heavy chains in a dungeon.

The predicament is sad but real. All of us know that children are the worst sufferers when the homes break. As it is, easier said than done, for breaking up a home, despite all the advancement, is not so easy as it looks. As I pointed out earlier, it is almost like the proverbial stepping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Fourth, there is the question of financial dependence, especially if they have been driven by emotionalism enough to have sacrificed their career to look after their husband and children. She has utilised all her talent to beautify the house, to run it as labour of love, but now she realises that it does not belong to her. Her education, that she could earlier bank upon, can’t get her job now, for she was spent the golden years of her life in looking after her family and is usually over-age for most of the prime jobs that she otherwise would have very well deserved and got.

If, unfortunately, she needs to cash in on her education after a gap of a few years, she finds that it has become redundant and can’t buy her financial independence any more. And without this financial prowess, even the rules and regulations lose their meaning, because she needs money even to fight for her rights. These blighted financial prospects also serve to turn her into a paralysed or mummified version of a woman.

Well, we can see that the fight in the dog has already died. How can it fight back? (It is meant to apply to both the genders) That emotionally and physically battered woman is in no state to help herself. The constant ill-treatment and victimisation shatters her self-confidence and self-esteem so badly that a sort of animal fear grips her mind, making her a psychological slave, a wreck, unable to stand up for herself and fight back.

In this collapsed state, she usually becomes immobilised into an automation, without any will of her own. Her identity is finished and she is like a smoked mirror. In this demoralised state, she does need some or the other friendly hand to pull her up, to infuse her with self confidence and to fill her with strength and motivation enough to rediscover herself, for she has already lost the capability of stepping out of this quagmire on her own.

But what do we usually do? Most of us step back, avoiding to help her out, conveniently calling it her personal matter. Double standards again. We call it her "personal matter" so that we don’t have to help her out in any way. It is no concern of ours. But surprisingly enough, we simultaneously do make this "personal matter" a thing of public concern when we pass all sorts of adverse judgements upon her. We adore sitting in judgement over others or just click our lips in mock sympathy, but certainly don’t hesitate at all in readily giving the impression that a lonely lady has no business living at all.

We need to have a more humane attitude towards women who are victims of such a behavioural aberration and cruelty. It is imperative that there must be some reservation of jobs where this age-bar can be waived off in the case of such women so that they can stand up on their own feet and start their life afresh.

IT is believed that motherhood is the culmination of a woman’s hopes, dreams and ambitions. It is not only supposed to be a woman’s natural destiny but the most honoured and exalted role. It is widely felt that to miss being a mother is to miss the most precious experience life holds for a woman.

Childlessness is viewed as a deficient condition which deprives her of complete self-realisation and felt as the greatest of all personal humiliations, whereas rejecting motherhood deliberately is unacceptable and thought to be perverse, unnatural and, perhaps, detestable. It is thought to be a woman’s duty to bring the next generation into the world because this is what she is uniquely made for. It is around this ideology that everyone, including a woman herself, is conditioned to develop a general attitude towards a woman, her life and her future.

A woman finds a great sense of power, security and success in motherhood because of a sudden rise in her status after childbirth. "I realised the importance of being a mother when I was feted with gifts and congratulations in the maternity ward and was being received at home with special treatment and smiling faces", reveals Leena, a housewife. A woman possibly experiences extreme exhilaration in motherhood, because a child is the one whom she can relate to come what may.

"With motherhood creeps in unusual grace which is beyond expression because after childbirth, the remotest corner of woman’s heart — where sincerity, truthfulness, sacrifice and devotion reside — gets activated", states Renu, a college lecturer. A mother brings up her child with devotion and sacrifices her life for his welfare.

But for what? What reward does she get out of it? She may not get anything but what she expects from her status of being a mother, is love and respect from her child. The bond between a mother and the child becomes so strong that she forgets to expect emotional gratification from her husband. That is why she, probably, she invests all her emotions in the child, with high expectations of emotional return/reward from him. And God knows if she receives that!

Though childbearing is undoubtedly "a biological function", but motherhood, as we understand, is socially and culturally constructed. It is reinforced through sex-role socialisation. One may disagree about the characteristics of an ideal woman but the general consensus is that the goal of a women is not only to bear children but raise them well That is what is considered the essence of her being.

A woman’s role as a mother takes precedence over all other roles that she performs. The child’s welfare is inextricably tied to the attributes, attitude and abilities of the mother and if anything goes wrong, she is either considered unfit or a negligent mother and her character stands up to scrutiny.

That a father can also "mother" the child is unthinkable. This ideology is so deeply inculcated in her attitude and personality that she can not imagine being something other than primarily a mother and a wife. A working mother is all the more pressurised as she tried to organise herself in such a way that her being employed does not come in to conflict with her primary commitment to her home and her child.

Parneeta, a free lance architect and a mother of two children maintains, "So long as I bring up my children adequately and spend quality time with them, no matter how difficult it my be, my husband does not object to my going out and working." That is probably the reason that most of the women, ignoring their preferences, qualifications and calibre prefer traditional occupations such as teaching which do not challenge their responsibilities as a mother.

Motherhood is a full-time job, though it is often seen as leisure/non-work rather than real economic productive work by the male folk. The time and energy a woman puts in mothering the child is often unrecognised and unpaid. In a way, it also renders her financially dependent on her husband.

Among working couples more participation from the father is expected or demanded, through collective child rearing or equal participation is the ideal. Why does her ability to bear the child determine that she can only bring up the child? This is something that is not understandable.

The father mothering the child, the way a woman does, can be expected only if our upbringing pattern changes and we are trained to do all types of jobs, irrespective of our sex.

This attitudinal charge can only come through revolution in the ideology of gender roles. For the time being alternatives such as provision of support services like well-equipped creches attached to every work-place, plus facilities like paternity leave, will help eliminate the perceived role conflict between men and women.