I meet women from different walks of life…but we are bound together as women, coz we are women. Last two weeks I heard more stories from so many women, all which everyone knows about, but it was the first time so many women talked to me about their ‘being women’. Just a sample of their stories. Changing names, coz we are women.
Mamta is married and has two small kids (she told me later it has been a love marriage). She and her husband worked with us. She confided in me that she prefers that she and her husband work in the same team and travel to the same places. She said that her husband wont prefer her to work at all if they don’t work in the same team/close by. I said its (temporary field based) work and I don’t know how much its possible. Then lowering her voice she added that she actually wants that she and her husband do not work in the same team as he will ‘scold’ her; or judge the way she works.
Katrina is so young and always smiling. Completing her BA. She is the eldest with two younger brothers. She has a big farm and knows a lot about farming. She makes it a point to go to her farm everyday, its not far, just one kilometre of walking. But she goes to college too, which is 5 kilometers far. I asked her how she goes. She said she walks.
Kavita has done her PhD from Europe. Her topic was domestic violence. She married the man she loves. When she studied in Europe (and a PhD is a long time), he was supportive and stayed in India and travelled to and fro in the ways it worked out best for them. Today she says her husband is physically violent with her.
Rakhi is bright. One day she hurriedly came up to me and said, ‘I hope I did the work correctly, as I don’t want to loose this work assignment’. She didn’t give me a chance to speak and went on, ‘my mother has supported me to come here and work. She wants her daughters to work. Even my elder sister is working in another state’. ‘My mother wants us to earn and do something so I don’t want to loose this. I was accepted admission to Delhi University to study but my family did not let me go. I live in a big family and till my father’s elder brothers and younger brothers don’t agree, I can’t go study. I really want to learn something here (at this work assignment).’
Leela has a beautiful smile. She was working as a community mobilizer in her village and nearby villages. She had been given a cycle by the NGO and used it to travel. She used to visit pregnant women. She worked for two years and then left it. Her father didn’t want her to work more as he didn’t like what people of the community said about his daughter doing this kind of work. She said that for the first six months she hadn’t even told her father about her work. She used to tell him that she is assisting her elder sister who runs her own beauty salon. She said her sister says that she will only marry a man who supports her entrepreneurial activity of running the salon. Today Leela’s family allowed her to work where she is presently, as she is working with a team of girls.
We briefed our team on the safe and unsafe days of the menstrual cycle. Its part of our work on reproductive, maternal and child health. In a group of couple of girls/women, Gayatri said, ‘okay my date starts from 14th this month….so which days would be safe and unsafe for me?’ We all did the calculations as many times till everyone in the group understood. Gayatri stood up in awe and said, ‘in the last 21 years of my life, no one has ever told me this! I always had the wrong information.’
These all are educated women of my country, full of aspirations and the desire to do more. But their stories don’t end here. Neither do stories of all the women of our country and of the world. I am not judging, I am only here to share. We all have our struggles, coz we are women. We are what we are socialized as. We are what we are taught to be. We are not what we want to be; we don’t even know if we were taught to ‘want’ to be anything. We be what they want us to be, coz we are women.
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