“Equality” – For Whom and How?

Equality refers to the idea that all individuals should have the same rights and opportunities, regardless of factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. This can include equal access to education, employment, and healthcare, as well as legal protections against discrimination. The concept of equality is central to many social and political movements, and is often reflected in laws and policies aimed at promoting fairness and justice for all people. It sounds like equality is something beyond one’s free choice to choose between his/her love and responsibility.

We have been so far accepting that in our society men are at the top of their careers, so the measure of male and female equality is the measure of women having similar positions and hence concerned bodies/groups are working in the direction to increase the count of women CEOs, directors, managers, leaders. But this is only one half of the real equality, the other half has yet to be recognized. This requires not only valuing women on male terms but by creating a wider range of choices which are equally respected and accepted for both men and women. This requires a change in our workplace, our policies and our culture.

In the workplace, equality means valuing work just as much as family. If a person works for you and have a family issue in between his work, you should allow him to attend that. And at the same should be confident that the work will get done; in a better way after that.?This is the kind of attitude which is required of a new age manager, one’s confidence and trust on employee if communicated properly will bring equality. Researches have shown that workers who have a reason to get home to care for their family are more focused, more efficient and more result oriented. Because the breadwinners who are also caregivers have the inherent character of patience, empathy, creativity, adaptability and resilience.

In policy terms, real equality means recognizing that the work that women have traditionally done is just as important as the work men have done so far. Breadwinning and caregiving are just two broad socially created roles for men and women respectively. The complexity behind this segregation can be easily understood by considering a same sex couple. Consider both are working (same profession) and equally love their work and are equally competent. Now, how would you suggest them to divide their breadwinning and caregiving responsibility? Whom would you suggest to change preferences for the betterment of the family and why? If you can think upon this issue for a while and try to find the root cause; somewhere it comes to the issue of work-life balance and not a gender problem, instead it is a family problem. So, when a women/men says family comes first for her/him, why we reason out that work comes second to her/him? Why is it hard for us to understand that life comes together?

This demands the positive approach of our society and the government to treat breadwinning and caregiving equally and invest as much in the creation of healthy society as they invest in strengthening our economy. There can be provisions for caregivers at home, school and early childhood education, protection for pregnant women and support for the elderly and the disabled. These initiatives must have to be followed with change in our culture which indicates about re-socializing men and women. Over the years, women have taken places outside home but men are still where they were always. Today a woman can drop out of workforce and can still be an attractive partner but for a man this is a highly risky proposition. The feminist revolutions over the years have given an authority to women to decide to be a breadwinner, a caregiver or a combination of both (at-least in developed countries and in some urban areas of developing countries). But for a man choosing to be a caregiver, is not easily acceptable to the society.

In our society, if a woman chooses to stay at home and raise her children, the problem is not that she makes herself economically vulnerable; but the problem is that our society is setup to make women vulnerable “when they choose”. The same goes for man and we have to deal with this. So as parents and families, we should encourage our children, husbands and wives to be whatever they want to be. Caregiving should be equally cool for boys as breadwinning for girls. This is actually hard to digest, but look around yourself. Today lots of men take pride in cooking, young fathers are more involved in their child care either by taking care of their baby or by helping their wives in household works. So, it is the time when we shape the feminist revolution as a humanist revolution and bring both caregiving and breadwinning together.

The next big concern is, is it possible? Can the government, the society can cater the needs and desires of everyone at the same time equitably? Yes, the governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Netherlands have already tried these things and have been proved successful. They rank among the top 15 countries of the most globally competitive countries and also rank higher in OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Better life index than other countries. Companies in these countries are raising an eyebrow if men are not taking paternity leave when they had kids, indicating a character defect to change the societal norms. Although this comes with the truth that these countries are much smaller than us in terms of size, diversity and history, but still the idea is worth taking. This examples show that change can happen, it is happening, it will happen. How far and how fast is up to us.?