CHORES HAVE NO GENDER!!!!!!!!!!

IF NOT WOMEN, THEN WHO??

I always wondered why there are this gender roles. I have seen my mother working for hours in the kitchen while my father spent time watching tv in our drawing room. My mother was not jobless, so she had to get up early in the morning and do all the chores in the kitchen and then had to hurry for my father's repeating horn from his scooter. If she had set off a little late by any chance, my father would just go by. Then she had to take a bus to reach her office. I am not saying that my father is this nasty man. He has his qualities apart from not entering the kitchen politics. Aside he did all other chores in our house. But there were many incidents that turned me against my father. Whenever this happens I would feel like bawling at this world for this underlying misogyny.

 

Every society, ethnic group and culture has gender role expectations, but they differ from place to place, group to group. Gender roles mean how we're expected to act, speak, dress, groom and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. for example: - women are expected to be accommodating and emotional while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive.

 Whenever there is an argument between my mother and father, my father tends to overpower her. he never listens to what she speaks. Even my mother never defends her statement incase if she does, my father makes the argument worse. So instead, what she does is that she waits till everything settles down and tries to talk through. But according to my father, he is always right even if he does something wrong. This is purely a male chauvinistic act from my father's side.

 

Gender roles dates back to the industrial revolution which started in the nineteenth century. Yet it still prevails all over the world. If not around the world it's still in my home.

When all these happened, me and my brother were kids. We didn't know what was going around. we thought this was how it supposed to be. But as we grew up, we became more aware of what was going on and we would do our best to make our father understand what he is doing wrong. One of our attempts were making him watch the movie “The great Indian kitchen”, but it failed miserably. I am not saying that my father is blind about these topics, of course he is a literate man and clearly has the ability to understand what is going on around, yet he desires to stay blindsided when it comes to equality. Even my mother has her bad qualities, she never has a statement on her own. Whatever my father says, she just nods along. she is doing that mainly to avoid further disagreement, which she should have avoided from the beginning of their relationship. Now, even if she wanted to change it, it had become a habit or a ritual kind of thing.

 

When we think of a solution for this, we could start by making changes in our home itself. Educate your parents what are they doing wrong or at least like in our case try to make attempts even if it fails terribly. There was a time when my mother used to serve my father the biggest fish fry and the smallest for the rest of us. Whenever I saw this, as a kid, I always felt something unethical about it. Once I questioned her and her reaction was that her mother used to do this. however, after that incident, I never saw her serving the biggest for my father. May be my question had triggered her to think straight this time.