Which gender is somewhat better at cooking? Coding? Makeup?
Turns out women are naturally good at all activities which are unpaid or undervalued, when they are classified as 'womanly virtues'...but when they start to command money and prestige suddenly the field is overrun with men, and women are pointedly excluded - sometimes absolutely prohibited from entering them.
Once you see the pattern you cannot unsee it!
And yes gender is about economics as well - not just woolly notions of fairness and equity.
Besides the examples given in the piece here are a few others - some of them were pointed out by the readers of the column
- The one thing which patriarchal men always boast about is their superior physical strength, so why is it that in remote corners of the country it is always the women and girls who carry water (a full water container is extremely heavy) over kilometres on end.
- Mehndi at weddings was typically applied by women but now that weddings are multi crore businesses with huge payment to vendors, suddenly men have begun to dominate the field
- The early computer whizzes include the great Grace Hopper whose inventions include COBOL which served as the backbone of computing for business (and still does in mainframe computing)
- Not just in luxury hotels but even in traditional weddings all cooking related contractors (from Kashmir to Tamilnadu) are men. Interestingly most of them (including the celebrity chefs from hotels) will say that they don't do the cooking in their homes.
Had written this column a few months ago but was reminded recently in a discussion on classical music.
Most of what we call classical music and dance was preserved for the coming generations by the tawaif and Devdasi tradition.
Till it was outside the respectable category, the women were the main characters and the men were the supporting players.
Once it became mainstream, the men muscled in. Just think about it, no veteran male classical singer or player is spoken of without the Ustad or Pandit or Maharaj honorific - it is more or less unthinkable to do it.
For many female artists it is used only occasionally if at all. For instance, think of how Gangubai Hungal or Kishori Amonkar are spoken of.
(As an aside, two books that give a good glimpse into the tawaif tradition are Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan and यह कोठीवालियांँ by Amritlal Nagar)
Women are not incapable or lacking in skills... they are simply systematically excluded from anything that gives them money, power and prestige.
Culture, values, traditions are the ways used to control them.
So many things hide in plain sight!
What are men and women good at - The answer may surprise you
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