Gone with the ring

As we get into another year, one of the first things I contemplate is this: who among the women in my circle of acquaintances and friends will “opt-out”? Each year, since graduating from college, there’s been a steady cull in the ranks of those who pursue careers, who steadily rise to the top.

On the surface, the reasons for the opting-out are, in the majority, due to maternal obligations. Then there are those who get hit by marriage — for the first time and even the second. Yet another group sacrifices everything at the altar of their husbands’ career ambitions. He’s got a great job offer in Palo Alto, in London, in Dubai, they say. I will quit my job and we’re going to pack up the house and move.

These are women I went to school and college with, who I watched win gold medals for topping their classes, who cracked the toughest entrance exams and became teachers’ pets. Academic and professional ambitions burned in them, in their pursuit of excellent grades and their constant undercutting of rivals.

But once the ring is on the finger or the mangalsutra is around the neck, the fire is doused, the light is dimmed. Now that there’s a cosy hearth, there’s no need for a second income.

The Sheryl Sandbergs of the world will talk of leaning-in and pushing more women through the ranks of the patriarchal corporate system. But what do you do when the women respond, ‘no thanks, I am much happier posting these pictures to my friends so they can admire the weave of the sari and the thinness of my post-pregnancy figure’?

This is the post-feminist world, they would argue if they knew such arguments are au courant , so I choose to do this and not apply my mind to creating ground-breaking technologies.

Our mothers’ generation never did this. They were teachers and doctors and engineers who got jobs and stuck to them tenaciously. There was good reason for them to — one person’s salary alone could not ensure the running of a household. I can’t help but think of them watching us with dismay, wondering why the bright sparks they’ve birthed are now lost to the wider world.

Lower down the pyramid, there’s no luxury of opting-out. The Pourakarmikas of Bengaluru hold on to their low-paying jobs and endure the abuse of their (male) bosses because without this work, they say, they are nothing. Those are the same words that pour out of Sandra, played by Marion Cotillard in the Dardennes’ latest film, Two Days One Night .

This outburst happens when Sandra finds out that her colleagues at the solar power plant where she works have decided that given the choice between getting their €1,000 bonuses or getting her back on the production line, they’ve decided to go with the money instead.

For Sandra and her husband, who’ve just entered the ranks of the middle-class, work is vital. For one of them to lose their jobs means going back to social housing, to a life of impoverishment, to the erosion of dignity.

Not long after I watched the film, I log on to Facebook and find myself confronted by a picture of another friend who has chosen to leave the workplace. There she is, kid in hand, smile wide, beautifully groomed. I remember a time when she worked her way through the complexities of calculus in the blink of an eye.

At times like this, it’s impossible not to hear Ginsberg’s Howl in my head: I am seeing the best minds of my generation being destroyed by the smugness of married, middle-class life.

The writer is a communications professional based in Bangalore

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