Women and Culture

Does women deserve equal rights to men? And on what basis, should we then differentiate.

It would be easy for me to re-hash all the evidence that women are as good as men or sometimes even better and apparently lot's of evidence suggest that- if pay was the only indicator- that we under-pay women as compared with men in doing the same job.

My feeling is that it is not because the market favour the men over the women, it is rather that the market and the world at large would rather prefer women to help out at home.

And that to me since to get the cause and effect on the opposite end. And I do believe and I sincerely believe that the number of chauvinist men is greatly outnumbered by men who think that women should be treated equally but somehow or rather, they would still prefer that women be the "family" person as compared to them as I think a majority of men's inclination is towards work as opposed to minding family matters.

Therefore the market to me I believed had the pay thing sitting on his head. Most men would prefer equal pay but unequal pay is unequal in spite of efforts of both side to equalize it because no one truly believes that women are encouraged to be workaholics but rather the inequality acts as an disincentive therefore to shift the division of labour to more culturally acceptable one- even to the women themselves.

Therefore despite of opinion polls and civil society actions- the pay is still loop-sided.

Society and everyone at large have to grapple with the idea of introducing women to the workforce- attracting them and retaining them- with that of child-bearing and rearing. Feminist ideals and women rights advancement have made it possible in legal and constitutional terms both men and women equal in the eyes of the laws- perhaps only in the area of marriage of which issues get a little more complicated. Therefore it is only in cultural terms that there is any inkling of any inequality.

Therefore this pay inequality between men and women is unequal in spite of the efforts of both sides and rather than despite of. The market has tweaked itself insofar to make it socially acceptable on both sides without losing women as a valuable contributors to the economy and discouraging them from setting up a family.

But having said that, men and women are fundamentally similar. There is no such thing as better or a poorer sex. The risk of trying to equalize everything on all fronts means trying asexualizing everything- of which there is no difference between a men and a women. If everything is asexual, of what value is being a man or a woman.

Women deserve equal rights but we must be sensitive to the cultural context surrounding the so-called "prejudices" in the first place. Or we all end as tadpoles, born asexual and not knowing our identity until much later in our life.

We are born anatomically different and therefore we are brought up culturally different. There are no biological linkage between the two but culturally we are valued differently. And therein lies the basis of our identity- but intrinsically we are remain largely similar.