Life Style of Working Wo‘men'

Working women and family life.

- Shanta Rangaswamy

She wakes up before the morning walkers of the locality; she can cook Italian to Chinese dish, North Indian to South Indian cuisine. She manages to attend the meeting with a business suit and a family wedding with a beautiful traditional saree and gajra on her hair. We all know ‘her’, the superwoman of the family who converts a ‘house’ into ‘home’ and yet does not let her professional career discontinue.

Women are the backbone of every society. The representation of women in labor force has been consistently increasing over the time, but at the same time, the expectations of the society from a woman as a prescribed gender role remains the same, as it used to be few decades back.

Usually structural barriers and cultural restrictions are the two major factors that contribute to this gender gap.

Though in the recent years, there is an increase in women pursuing higher education globally, a gender gap in employment rate remains the same among the highly educated women and men in few countries. An unpaid caregiving responsibilities can prevent a paid employment opportunity, and this work disproportionately falls on women. Therefore, women who are determined to have a work-life are doubly jeopardized. Whether to be conventional to the gender role and be a favourite daughter-in-law or to be ambitious and work for that promotion, is the kind of conflict working women face every day.