Why is woman asked to compromise.......scientific reasons to this, if any....

How about the idea - ' With marriage, you and hubby build your own sweet home' ..
As much as you accept hubby , even he has to accept you.. Only then there is some meaning to the marriage..

 

And I feel that even if India is criticized one iota in ANY thread, you are up in arms about it... which is odd, because surely we can all agree India has a long way to go in regards to it's treatment of women and in other aspects as well.

Yes, there is some degree of descrimination against women in all cultures. But certain cultures are MUCH worse than others. So what made some of the world's cultures change and get better? The people. They discussed that something bad was going on, they weren't afraid to 'bash' certain aspects of their own country's culture, and hence they were able to make huge leaps forward. Look, we are Indians... if we don't discuss the failures of our own culture and how to improve it.... then whose culture shall we discuss? Chinese? African? We are Indians.... and hence affected by the practices in INDIAN CULTURE. So obviously, we need to look at the bad parts and see what we can do to change it. But that's never going to happen if we are too afraid or have too much misplaced patriotism to objectively take a look at what is going on in our own families and society.

By pretending that nothing is wrong, you aren't going to make the problems go away. If some of us want to discuss the negative aspects of our culture, and brain storm WHY it happens, and maybe WHAT we can do about it.... then why are you having a problem with that every time?

Like I've wondered before in other posts... just because some small aspect of Indian culture is criticized... doesn't mean anyone has to go on a rampage to prove India is best or Indians are just the coolest/bestest/prettiest/smartest/whateverest in the world. Why get over sensitive about it? Obviously nobody here hates Indians, else they wouldn't join an Indian themed site like this one! It's really sad, because seems like this stuff can't even be discussed without the thread getting shut down eventually. I feel bad that we would rather preserve our egos than work on the issues.

 

I agree with you 100%. Women & Men are not equal. Nature designed each with their own unique set of strengths & weaknesses. We cannot argue with nature & those who do always get into trouble.

Not true. That is how it was in the west also until 1970s. Only when women started working in the west in 1980s, did changes started taking place on the home front in this regard.

An interesting historical question often debated today is whether changes in the home front appeared because of women beginning to work & earn income. A historical tidbit on this note is that when women started working in 1980s, a change in the family spending habits became pronounced. In 1980s, businessmen saw the change in who gets gets to spend the buck in the family & used it to their advantage by simply encouraging women to work & earn. Why? because for the first time two people in the family were spending money backed by two incomes unlike pre-1980s when only men worked & earned. Its in 1980s that advertisements started aiming women also. Encouraging women to work & earn income was a sure shot way of bringing new money into shopping in an already stagnated male-dominated shopping markets across the world. Consequently, ensuring prolonged growth in profits for businesses. A lot of women-specific products were also created by businesses so that they can target and earn the woman's share of money as well to further boost their profits. This also continues to this day. There is no philanthropic reason for encouraging women to work beyond this.

 

I agree with you, Saipavani! In any times and ages, women are more emotionally mature than men. You can even see the difference between same age children. However, there's considerable difference between maturity in women today and woman a generation or two ago when they were just married.

compromise in my opinion doesn't mean "shut up and endure it for sake of society/family". It means have patience and maturity to calm yourself in an intense situation, and later resolve issues calmly by talking or even doing things to show by example. this kind of maturity and sensitivity in a person raises respect/admiration in other people. that is the aim of being patient and compromising. to raise the respect/admiration of wives in eyes of men so that they value the wives' words and think about their own behavior thoughtfully before acting in future situations.

These are two cents!

 

Women in the west started working only in the 1980s? Well I will let you ponder about the accuracy of that fact. I don't have to go much far to disprove that fallacy as my parents were married in the 1970s and they were both working and so did many of their friends. I am not sure if your idea of West is just the United States but even if I were to assume so, women in the United States were working in factories and other industries since WW1. And in fact during WWII, women worked in large numbers in American factories because men were dispatched to the warfront.

Just because the product adverts on telly saw women as a potential demographic to target in the 1980s (that fact may have some merit to it) does not translate to women in the West started working only in the 1980s. Both in Western Europe and the United States, women were employed in factories and other places since atleast World War 1. By WW II, women were working in large numbers in American and European factories to keep the arms and armaments factories running plus support their families because their husbands were in the warfront. Women in England and Wales have worked in factories since the start of Industrial revolution. And Russia during WWII had women in their airforce as pilots due to their equality principle under communism. For most of these periods, neither was television available as mass media to target women and nor was consumerism movement so big up until the 1980s. The concept of working women and dual income families has existed in the west way longer than you claim to know. And the idea that men were the sole bread winners prior to 1980s in the West is bollocks.

 

I dont understand what is wong in encouraging women to work?.. If women works and it boosts the nations economy, family income raises, overall quality of living improves.. What is wrong in it?.. If women working requires changes in the homefront, so be it.. Isn't it better to share household work rather than burden the woman with houshold chores and the paid job?.. What is wrong in sharing the workload..

I believe even men are bestowed with the same amount of patience and endurance as women.. For eg.. Most companies/countries have men at topmost positions.. To sustain those positions it requires patience and endurance.. Not that men are any less matured or patient than women.. I personally feel men can handle more pressure better than women..
For the compromising part, i feel upto a certain extent, it is ok to compromise, beyond a certain limit it should not be accepted.. I'll give you a stat for that.. Traditional Indian women believe in compromises and according to you it should raise the respect/admiration , if it were to be true then why would India have the highest rate of dowry deaths.. India also tops in female feticide .. The laws for women protection is proof enough that women are oppressed and this kind of an oppression exists.. IMO women can make some compromises to make a marriage work, but compromises that results in her oppression should not be made.. Also parents should teach and empower their daughters, imbibe in them their rights and responsibilites as a woman..

 

My observation has been that on the relationship forums there is a tendency to present a skewed and one-sided picture. This forum attracts OPs that have marital issues. domestic violence, .. these exist in all cultures, however Indian culture is specifically called out as a cause opposed to analyzing the complete picture, and actually offering the OP some constructive advise.

There is a reason that feminist movements exist all over the world, that is because women have been treated unfairly all over, it is not specific to India, or Indians or Indian culture.

Did you know that 22.1% of women in the US are victims domestic violence. 3 women in the US are murdered every day by an intimate partner in the US. Would you blame the western culture for that?

I think the approach would be to blame the individual, however if the same were said by an Indian, it would be blamed on culture, customs, rituals, obsession with male child......

Just as specific practices of individuals or sects (e.g. mormons, mennonites) in the US are not representatives of all peoples in the US, similarly handpicking few people/communities and extrapolating their practice to the entire country would be unfair.

 

United Nations, October 13: Around two-third of married women in India were victims of domestic violence and one incident of violence translates into women losing seven working days in the country, a United Nations report said.

As many as 70 per cent of married women in India between the age of 15 and 49 are victims of beating, rape or coerced sex, the United Nation Population Fund report said.

However, the rate of domestic violence is much higher in Egypt with 94 per cent and Zambia with 91 per cent.

The report said violence against women was putting a huge strain on a nation's social and legal services and leads to heavy loss of productivity.

 

Women compromise because of another woman in the family and not because of men.

I'll substantiate my statement here. I can talk only about the circumstances that I have been exposed to.

Women encourage the ego in the man. The woman can be a mother, a grandmother, a sister, or a wife. It is in India we used (or still) categorize women's chores and men's chores. This paved way to gender divide. Women are typically expected to cook, clean, take care of the house while the man had to only work and make money. The man had the final say in everything because he brought-in money.

This one reason made women to compromise. Despite several abuses women still cling on to a marriage because of lack of exposure to the world, the traditional mindset that the moment you are in your 20's you must get married, live with husband and inlaws and produce children before you are 30.

Who cultivates this mindset, it is another woman in the form of a mother / grandmother. The moment the next generation is born, the previous generation must stop infusing the age old thoughts.

The woman must be taught to be independant, take care of herself financially, think freely withouth guilt, act responsibiliy for her actions. She need not be taken care, but she will take care of several when she has a strong emotional foundation.

The age old thoughts are very visible in this forum. When I read that a lady is a MCA and a MBA but is abused by her husband what is the use of her education?

Women here are torn between education, exposure and traditions. It's sad that traditions take over the other 2 in times of crisis. When a woman becomes a mother, she stops (literally) thinking for herself but starts thinking for the child, and this is yet another reason for her to compromise. For a moment, if she snaps off and decides to find her way and take care of the child, she will be better off.

I read yet another exp the husband buys the lady clothes once in 4 years (??). What a man is he? His ego is boosted by his mother and is tolerated by the wife. If the mother had disciplined the man, and the wife saying he can keep whatever he has with him and she can find her way out, he will be reduced to nothing but rubbish.

In certain families, I've seen men leaving their plates after their meal, where the lady has to clear them off. What an attitude is this? This is an age old practice encouraged by other women (mother and grand mother). If the woman (wife) in the first instance had said, he has to clean the plate by himself, why on earth would he demand a princely treatment?

Women are women's worst enemies.

 

I could not agree more with this statement and I have long believed this to be the case