On the quiet prejudice that still follows accomplished women.
“I’m not surprised she’s divorced. She’s too smart to be a good wife.”
That remark was made by a young man in a classroom full of accomplished professionals studying law, about a woman going through a divorce.
My friend, an accomplished woman in her 50’s and an executive who was no stranger to such sentiments, responded, barely masking her annoyance:
“So, you think that for a woman to be a good wife, or to have a successful marriage, she needs to be a little dumb?”
The man, ignorant, or perhaps too impressed with himself to detect the sarcasm; answered with a chuckle, “Yes.”
A prejudice that travels well
I wish this were part of a fictional novel I was writing. Unfortunately, it was a real conversation among educated adults who had lived life and been exposed to the world. Ignorance cannot be feigned here.
This incident happened in Sri Lanka, but this view is certainly not exclusive to that part of the world.
This attitude, that women must fit a certain mold to be considered eligible for marriage, still plagues many cultures and communities. It may be more visible in some places than others, but it remains a widespread bias against women.
The acceptable version of ambition
I know parents who sacrificed to give their daughters a good education and every opportunity to succeed. Yet when life pivoted for one such daughter leading her to choose a 9-to-5 career, instead of becoming a doctor, her father’s placated sentiment was, “That’s probably better suited for a woman.”
Why?
I experienced similar sentiments in my own life when my dear mother waged war against my career, believing it was why I remained single at 28.
Choice should not be judged by gender
I know many women who successfully juggle careers, marriages, and children; women who prove that being a good mother does not require giving up a career, and having a career does not make one a lesser life partner.
I also know women who gave up their careers because that was the best choice for their families, and a few men who became stay-at-home dads for the same reason. Choice itself is not the issue; the gendered judgment attached to it is.
Marriages often unravel when the commitment between partners wanes, leading their differences to overshadow the bonds that ones united them. The notion that a woman’s intelligence or education is a barrier to a successful relationship is merely a misguided excuse, rooted in a man’s struggles with self-esteem and perpetuated by societal beliefs, including those held by women themselves.
When “jokes” reveal what people really believe
A successful friend of mine, an executive, was once told at an office function that, as a good-looking woman, it must have been easy for her to sleep her way to the top.
I have also been on the receiving end of a similar joke, asking whether I slept with my professor because I earned a B.Sc., majoring in Chemistry with a class, but chose not to work in my field of education.
Why do men think these are jokes? They reveal a gender bias built on the idea that women cannot succeed on their own merits.
Or perhaps they reveal something worse: the inability of such men to use good judgment when their judgment is clouded by desire. If a man promotes a woman because of sexual favours rather than merit, that reflects his incompetence, not her lack of worth.
In both examples, the men who found these jokes funny had made precisely those kinds of judgment calls. Neither intelligence nor experience was enough to overcome their gender bias.
The ladder and the thorns
This is the reality women still navigate. No parent tells a son to shrink his ambition to become eligible for marriage. No man becomes the punchline at an office gathering for his achievements, accused of having slept with the boss.
The world sees the woman who reaches the top but seldom sees the thorns she stepped on while climbing the ladder.
And still, I hear people, including women, question feminism.
