I was meeting Swami after a long time. This time the reason was #ShareTheLoad. I wanted to understand the crux of the reason behind a cruel reality of our society where Women have taken the route to equality for the external world of a family by stepping out to work and share the financial load of a family. But her label of being a homemaker still remains intact. A woman despite taking care of multiple roles of a mother, sister or a wife is still being held solely responsible for household chores as her prime responsibility. The age old phenomenon of 'division of labor' is still unaltered and is deep rooted in our home, society, and nation expecting the women of the house to own all responsibilities within the four walls of the home.
Photo credit: Saarblitz via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA
Right since so many years, a child is taught that a girl is the one performing domestic chores like cleaning, washing, cooking, etc. while a boy in the family has to yearn for a profession to be the primary earning member of the family and take the onus of earning the bread and butter for the entire family. The scenario has changed in one direction when girls are prepared for a professional life and women have taken an equal responsibility of an equal or maybe, a higher earner in the family. But what about the other side of the wall? Why every household chore is still the responsibility of the woman of the house even if she has to sacrifice her life, profession, education, stamina, and energy manifold to just follow it blindly without raising her voice against it?
Swami is my good old childhood friend turned a multinational c-suite executive as per the last information we met a decade back. After that I lost his track or probably he wanted to go in an isolation state to take a final call of his life. During our early education days I had a big impact of Swami's ideologies. He was quite serious and matured during those days. He was beyond his age. He, in fact, was my mentor, inspite of being my classmate. He never differentiated between genders. When I used to visit his house, he would be helping his mother in her household chores without a hitch. He would go to kitchen to prepare tea, would not hesitate to wash clothes, to clean house and so on. These small gestures turned me too into similar kind of guy and I never felt insulted doing all such things at home. Neither did my male chauvinism would get hurt.
After a decade when I got Swami's call, I could not dare to ignore it. He was in India for a decade now after he resigned from his MNC well flourishing job and decided to take a different route. I got surprised to know that for last 10 years he is on a mission to educate youth of the country with a cause. And the cause is to eradicate gender bias in everybody's life. He has been successful in this. He has become a wanderer. He visits remote villages and towns to educate people about this. Educating them to break the invisible walls between a man and a woman.
“You know the reason behind these walls is nothing but our mindset that sets the barriers. Once you are able to break that jinx, everything seems easy and attainable.” He said when we met recently. I left my job because everyday I used to stand in front of mirror and ask myself what is my purpose in life.” “And one day I found the answer from within.” The answer that he got a decade back made him resign from his job and start his own venture. A venture where money is not the top priority for him. This is an education venture where he not only teaches children who are the builders of our nation but also their parents to make them understand that the times are gone for creating a gap between a girl and a boy.
Today all are equal and have same set of responsibilities. Men are equally homemaker with their family as women of the house. If a woman can work full time why can't a man share household chores with her and #ShareTheLoad? If a mother can bear the pain of birth of her child, why can't father take the equal ownership when the child is born?
That is Swami who is building his army of youngsters to fight with these evils of our society and gear everyone up to #ShareTheLoad. I feel proud to be part of Swami's bandwagon. Find out Swami around you. It lies inside everybody's heart, mind, and soul.
I am taking part in the #ShareTheLoad Challenge with Ariel and Akshara at BlogAdda.
