The Opinions Blog

It was a yellow canary. When she broke out of the egg, she came out all fluffy, yellow and grey. They taught her how to take flight with her tiny wings. They trained her to sing, in a soulful voice that became the fame of the jungle. They showed her to track seeds, and build her cup nest in the best of shrubs. Then one day as she was flying high in the sky, a netted cloth closed on to her, clipped her wings together. Next she awoke, she found herself in a golden cage, with an abundance of seeds, with people co-cooing her all around, urging her to sing.

She never sang again. And a few days later, was no more.

Similar to the life of the yellow canary, will be the life of several young women of our generation, whom for lack of better words, I will chose to call Alpha Females. These alpha females have been considered equal to boys since childhood. They have competed with the boys (and defeated them) right from school days – in exams, debates, tests – and then later on in higher levels of competition like college entrances, job interviews etc. This continuous competition and regular winning has ingrained an indomitable fighting spirit in their minds. They are employed by the best of firms, in the best of careers, and feel that their journey for success has just started.

And exactly at that point of time, comes along their netted cloth – marriage.

Suddenly the alpha females find themselves in completely unfamiliar terrain. All of a sudden, the expectations from them change. Their parents start expecting that they will now leave their career ambitions to have a fruitful and happy married life. Their husbands appreciate their success till date, but want them to become adjusting now. They do not want conflicts and believe that the important career in the household is their own, and hence the secondary career can be sacrificed a little. All this in the name of a happy married life.

In the process, the alpha females get hurtled around. The concept of taking their foot off the pedal or slowing down their success rate is too foreign to digest. They have two options, to stay alone or to slow down. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation. If they stay alone, the loneliness will finally get to them. If they slow down, their lack of achievement, after the hard work they have put in throughout life, will always pinch them.

If this is what equanimity between men and women finally gets you, one wonders about the efficacy of the efforts, when the expectations are skewed in nature. It is like encouraging women to run the 500 metres sprint, and then asking them to slow down after the first 100 metres; and then justifying it by saying that at least they got the experience of running the first 100 metres.

The recent years have seen a multitude of efforts being put in, all across the world, to confer on women a way of living similar to that of men, to enable them to stand in the world as equals in all respects, to feel liberated and emancipated.

But this emancipation is inherently flawed. It provides you with a liberated lifestyle while you’re young, but once you have experienced the freedom and independence that the lifestyle gets you, the society comes back again to strike you with its burden of expectations of adjustment.

This flaw, unless solved, will leave several young women utterly confused and torn apart in the process of their growth.