On... Collier and Indian women today.

Mary Collier wrote her The Woman's Labour: an Epistle to Mr. Stephen Duck in 1739 as a response to Stephen Duck’s The Thresher’s Labour in which he belittles the labour of the working class women. Reading the work is like going through an overt insight into the situation of the working women of India today, the real women who work in fields and construction sites, the ones who toil day and night in four or five different kitchens to feed their children, the middle class mothers who run to catch the right shuttle train and travel three or four hours each day.

All of us bargain with our maids, considering house-keeping to be menial and hence needs to be paid less. On the other hand, a gardener who comes in for a few hours and tends to the flowers and mows the lawn every once in a while gets paid more, because it is considered hard labour. It is with this particular view that the comparison of the poetic instance and the present scenario follows.

 No Learning ever was bestow'd on me ;
My Live was always spent in Drudgery :
And not alone ; alas ! with Grief I find,
It is the Portion of poor Woman-kind.

Slightly more than half of Indian women are educated, reducing their opportunities of working in better paid jobs. Though we have many programmes which is specifically aimed to encourage female literacy, it is a sad fact that girls are considered secondary and neglected when it comes to even basic amenities. Lack of education also decreases the chance that a woman approaches the judiciary when she is mistreated at home or at work. Legal representation is scathing and costly, if not in an economic way, more so in the social sector.

And you, great DUCK, upon whose happy Brow
The Muses seem to fix the Garland now,
In your late Poem boldly did declare
Alcides' Labours can't with your's compare ;
And of your annual Task have much to Say,
Of Threshing, Reaping, Mowing Corn and Hay ;
oaOting your daily Toil, and nightly Dream,
But can't conclude your never-dying Theme,
And let our hapless Sex in Silence lie
Forgotten, and in dark Oblivion die ;
But on our abject State you throw your Scorn
And Women wrong, your Verses to adorn

The above stanza signifies and symbolizes the psychological trauma and sense of inequality that most working women go through. The chauvinists in our society are usually held in high esteem, even if it is a film star who tells that his wife’s primary duty is at home.  Often the woman’s labour is trivialized. Cooking, cleaning and such house hold chores considered insignificant and hence undeserved to be paid. There is a clear demarcation about gender roles when it comes to non-domestic work too. A nurse or a school teacher is considered to be ideally suitable role for women. Women too are so bounded by the notions of ease so that they could go home and be with their family without much hassles at work, prefer these professions. On the other hand, jobs that are better paid, even though fairly within the reach of women with the same qualification of men might be considered too masculine and demanding. After all, a man can concentrate fully in his work. His wife would have run ahead of him and cooked dinner by the time he reached home. This dichotomy also offers the fallacy that every woman who works has it easy or that every piece of work that a woman does is easy. 

For my own Part, I many a Summer's Day
Have spent in throwing, turning, making Hay ;
But ne'er could see, what you have lately found,
Our Wages paid for sitting on the Ground

WHEN Ev'ning does approach, we homeward hie,
And our domestic Toils Incessant ply :
Against your coming Home prepare to get
Our Work all done, our House in order set ;

Collier very sarcastically reminds Duck that the women are never paid for idling around and that they do the same amount of work as the men, toiling away in the summer heat. Women work as hard as their bodies allow them in the scorching sun.   It maybe hard to argue against the idea that in this era of globalization, privatization has opened new arenas for women who can use their prowess to paddle forth as much as a man can. But the glass ceiling is not a term that came to being because women couldn’t reach for the skies. 

The most callous cruelty of our times is that women in India are expected to play, without fault, a double role. The hilarious anecdotes of commuters who slice vegetables or catch a nap or grade papers in the train offer only a small window into the middle class dilemma. The tragedy is that there are no proper toilet or workplace facilities for most women, especially the ones in the unorganized sector or the long commuters. I know a woman who had to carry home her used sanitary pad, safely hidden in her purse because there was no facility in the long commute to get rid of it.

While we, alas ! but little Sleep can have,
Because our froward Children cry and rave ;
Yet, without fail, soon as Day-light doth spring,
We in the Field again our Work begin
And there, with all our Strength, our Toil renew,
Till Titan's golden Rays have dry'd the Dew ;
Then home we go unto our Children dear,
Dress, feed, and bring them to the Field with care.
Were this your Case, you justly might complain
That Day nor Night you are secure from Pain ;

When I was a kid, my mother used to wake up at four o’clock in the morning to prepare breakfast and lunch for me. She would neatly make sure that I was fed and packed before she reached for the car keys to drive me to the bus stop. When I had my period, she would let me rest, all the while doing the daily chores and office work when she too probably was bleeding. Most of us children take it as granted. Mother’s cooking, mother’s touch, mother’s duty.  But the fact is that it is not an assigned duty of mother alone. The middle-class working woman now has to teach her children too. Make sure the homework is done, tests are prepared for and grades are good. Any simple slip would be attributed to the woman and her career choice. Were the father’s case, he justly might complain that day nor night he is secure from pain. Nutrition and rest cease to be important.

 SO the industrious Bees do hourly strive
To bring their Loads of Honey to the Hive ;
Their sordid Owners always reap the Gains,
And poorly recompense their Toil and Pains.

Though Collier wrote this in the pre-industrial revolution period, it has to be acknowledged that she got the dynamics quite right. Attention is drawn to this stanza, which is the last stanza of the poem, precisely because there is gender equivalence in it. It implies that men and women are equally industrious and each contributes to the fattening of the purse of the employers (We cannot pretend it is not true even now or that the rich-poor divide is not increasing.). Though she paints a grim picture, let us extrapolate it to its microscopic merit of equivalence. It is precisely this idea that makes one realize that unorganized sector should slowly and efficiently transform itself into organized form. We need to make sure that such rampant discrimination ceases to be, in home and outside it.

It is a pity that India with its high economic growth hardly has progressed from a scenario 270 years back and such parallels could be drawn from a poem written by a washer woman who felt the injustice of her sex’s condition. It is necessary that we push past these archaic boundaries and step into the light. As I read somewhere, “Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.” It is high time we realized that old-fashioned ways do not mean just the segregation of women inside four walls.