The men who do it all

These are two of several surprising conversations that I happened to have in various situations. When I think about them, they bring me hope. So no more intro text from me – I want these to speak for themselves.

Conversation 1:

At a major power exhibition, an industry that has been a very traditional and hence male-dominated domain. I spent three days with a group of experts, diverse in their Indian cultures, passionate about their technologies. Here I connected with a first time father of an infant, a few months old. He is from Bihar, working in Chennai. His personality is very outgoing, - he finds humour in everything, and puts me instantly at ease. When we talk about kids, I’m surprised - it’s the kind of conversation I have with other moms! His wife goes to work from 7.30am and he goes to work from 3.00pm to midnight, when she gets back. He takes on complete caregiving all day, along with supervising the cook and domestic staff. I mention to him that what he’s doing is pretty admirable, and he seems confused about it. She’s my baby, he says. When we talk, he refers to ‘my baby’ all the time, like any new mom would do. When I bring up how tough it must be to balance everything, (a question that moms seem to really respond to with emotion), he says, “You know, I think women complain about things a lot. I do everything that my wife does, and I don’t stress about it. I mean, I’ve got a baby in one hand and I’m getting her food ready with another, and explaining to the cook what a Kashmiri Mirch is, and it’s all fine!”

Conversation 2:

This is a chat conversation with a group of my girlfriends, who are at various stages of life – newly married, some with small kids, some with grown up children. With chagrin, one of them vents about how she was having the ‘you don’t do enough around the house’ fight. In the course of this, she and her husband sat down and listed all the work around the house and who did it. She was most annoyed with the results. “It wasn’t a fight I expected to lose!!” she said. Another one who was recently married chimed in that she had a similar experience. “Actually it’s a perception of inequality that we have.” She summed up.

In the larger context which is overwhelming – where basic issues are so predominant, like female infanticide, menstrual taboos, continuing education of girls, encouraging young women to pursue careers as well as marriage – these pockets of change bring me hope.

I think that maybe the answer is not to talk so much about the victimization of girls, but to also make shining examples of the men who do it all, but don’t consider it anything special.