Dignity of the Being
The Bark of a Tree … tells the tale of fortitude and strength in the grounding .
Your scars are patterns life has drawn on you while you held ground .Be proud of who you are . You are Amazing !Savvy Raj
Every life deserves the Dignity of being a freedom to be respected as they are, a freedom to be able to express, freedom to be valued and feel safe and secure, as every other human being .
Whose Job is it anyway?
When a family lives together… What actually makes a home a home?
Who contribute to it in making it the way it is and whose involvement is what … Defining these is never easy as each family has its equations set in its own way but a thought does arise on the disparity of gender induced roles in our society as far role-playing is concerned.
A few questions worth answering to yourself when you are considering responsibilities of family.
How much are you valued for the work you do?
How much do you value the work you are doing?
What kind of life do you see yourself living?
How are you actually living?
Do you have children and how much are they dependent on you?
Do you desire to give your family your time?
Do you feel your partner is taking your inputs for granted?
Do you communicate with one another easily?
What are your ideas and attitudes about sharing family responsibilities?
Do you believe in sharing of household work?
(Relevant especially if you are living in countries where labour is expensive).
The question of who does what may be unique to each household between genders but the conditioning of the man being expected to provide and protect through earnings from employment and the woman being expected by nature to nurture and nourish and feed and fulfill the continuous needs of the family has been handed traditionally across cultures.
This was all ok as long as the woman started stepping into the corporate world and took on positions which slowly began to be demanding in commitment and effort and in time and travel.
Recently I came across a very relevant post by Lisa Gallagher https://www.bebee.com/producer/@lisa-gallagher/a-different-type-of-leadership. And her thought provoking post aroused many sentiments in the reader’s mind. One of the topics she brings forth is the guilt factor amongst women on both sides of the fence as well as many other relevant questions.
Quoting from her article …”Many women who stay home with their children become the Chef, the ultimate life coach, great debaters, negotiators, learn to function on less than 4 hours of sleep for quite some time, financial planners, taxi cab drivers, volunteers for many events that come up throughout the years on behalf of their children or for other causes they involve their children in, party planners, travel agents, and mighty maids! Some of these same women go to bed feeling as though they still aren’t contributing enough. I think in part, some women feel guilty because no-one tells them how worthy they are. No one shares with them how appreciated they are.
The guilt factor stepped in gradually amongst women who had a choice to make as well as in those who had no choices they could make. Speaking of the educated woman who having had equal rights in education and having suitable qualifications in hand as well as innate creative strength, it was downright frustrating for such women to base their career moves depending on family equations and emotions. Engagement in that which is your passion makes the road easier and hence many women perhaps leave out the professional field and prefer to step into the alternative options of less paid or part-time jobs are driven by their innate passion. In the process, they end up multitasking and over working and overstrained.
Laura Gagliardone in her well-researched article on Gender Equality Projections encapsulates ‘Unpaid work is essential to well-being. However, it limits women’s ability to participate equally with men in the labour market and reduces the time available to them for self-care, human capital investment, socialising with other people, political participation and relaxation. The provision of household and care services, viewed as ‘the natural duty of women’, is commonly taken for granted …’
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/investing-gender-equality-projections-economic-growth-gagliardone
Years of complacency over the roles of work makes people’s attitudes of each other and their jobs difficult to change. But whenever there is a realisation at any age that life is meant to live lovingly and not just to exist it is time to introspect a little deeper.
Cogitations for generations have generated a multiplicity of attitudes towards whose work is it anyway.Is the one out at work to escape the routines of the home and family and is the one at home to be tied up by routines that never allows for independence perhaps also considering that they could be the ones working daily without monetary rewards.
The answers to this question boggle every household where stakes are high without the security of finances and often there is also a taking each other for granted due to lack of interest over the years or options to change the equation.
Here is a true story in a gist of a charwoman
The case of a house help a ‘maid’ in India
Working in eight houses along with mine
Washing utensils and cleaning rooms
Waking at early dawn
Walking for an hour or more
Each day to and fro …
From early morning to the dusk of eve and returning home
To an alcoholic husband, without a job
A brood of kids with hardly an age gap
All of them undernourished and impoverished
The woman nonchalantly shoulders the burden
Her body famished in the daily grind
She has no time to rest but
To hear and bear the torture
Of abuse and apathy
As well as rantings and ravings
Of a hopeless husband in sympathy
Yet she braves on a smile on her often bruised face
Learning to carry on…without a support or care
Strengthened in the process
The spirit in her takes it all in her stride
She saves the food she is offered
Where she works, to feed her ever hungry children
A child herself as she was married young
But the indomitable spirit of life and living garnered in the challenges
That life has thrown her way from birth
Priceless beyond compare
Life goes on for her
Her life is a mere existence in making through each day and night…
What gender equality are we talking about?
What is different between the woman on the road and the woman sitting in a plush house but without financial or emotional security
Really not much
One is undercover disguised and forbidden to share due to societal pressures
One is out in the open vulnerable and bare.
Bounded by duty imposed without a right
But both silenced in the humdrum of life and living.
Savvy Raj
To see one another through beyond the strife,
Let’s care to empower the inner spirit in every little way we can.
Uniting all in the strength of the interconnects that run common in this thread of life .
Savvy Raj
Member CID UNESCO
About the Author:
Ms Savvy Raj is a Member of the International Dance Council UNESCO the official worldwide organisation for all forms of dance. As a Dance Educator and Corporate Wellness Trainer, she conducts workshops in Social Dances, Holistic Well-Being as well as Personal Effectiveness.She is a certified adult trainer who uses the creative medium of dance towards bringing empathetic consciousness in her students. Using International Social dance forms and a variety of improvisational techniques as well as creative movement exercises she brings forth the humane connect in it all. Working towards the development of an individual through dance applications and nurturing in the learners an enthusiasm to see and live life positively and empathetically.
Savvy is also certified Graphologist who pursues this as a hobby in her spare time along with a passion for writing, painting, poetry, drawing, sketching and designing.
Some more of her related articles on Empowerment
Shakthi: The Potential Abundance
Savvy Raj 