Women have to pay a huge price to get empowered. As a couple, handling 2 P’s (Personal and Professional) will be a cake walk, but practical difficulties pops up when we lead a life in a family. A survey says Women in India more likely to quit their corporate jobs due to “double burden syndrome”.
Workplace generally revolves around short term and long term goals, appraisals, meetings, deadlines. Building up a powerful support system at home energizes us to accomplish our career goals easily. Most of the successful empowered women we come across would have faced numerous hurdles at home. I planned to take up feedback’s from three sections of family members – Women (Wife, Mother, Daughter /Daughter in law), Spouse, Elders (Mother, Mother in Law) to decipher the root cause of all the hurdles at home so that it would help you to tackle it your own style whenever you face it.
Women – Balance family and work
I got a chance to query few women on how far their family supports their decision of pursuing their career. Only few replies were quite positive rest tend to be little bitter to hear. Most of the women say that their rapport with their spouse gets affected and few feel that spouse fail to recognize the hard work she put in running the family. Elders at home react in a cold way whenever she has to travel to office in case of any emergencies or family get-together. Consolidating most of their replies lead to a conclusion that most of them have deprived sleep, skip food and spoil their health to sustain in both arenas.
Spouse – Lifeline of every woman who wants to venture out to retain her identity.
My spouse and I had difference of opinion in resuming my career post par tum. My initial thought about him was “He wants me to be financially dependent on him and wants me to give up my career to care for family”. Later we had many rounds of discussions which lead me to a clear picture of what he actually absorbed about my stand on resuming work. His perspective about me was “To earn money at any cost and extend monetary support”. The moment I made him understand the fact that I am not much interested in money but I am on a process of creating my own identity, he would babysit our daughter whenever I was unable to take care of her.
Elders – Support system during absence.
As the tagline conveys that they can only run the show during our absence (once in a blue moon). Most of the elders who are ready to shoulder the responsibilities during the initial days feel fatigue as year’s pass by. This indirectly causes friction in relationships. My mother who was ready to take care of my daughter itself confesses that she can only be a moral support and she hails my decision of not burdening any of the elders in our family.
If you are planning for a comeback plan for yourself, get your support system ready. Allow the women at home to achieve empowerment so that they would extend their support whenever you plunge into action.
Links to other articles written by the same author to pursue foreign language as an alternative career: ‘ En route to Linguistic Careers‘, ‘Lingua Skola for those interested in foreign languages‘, I’am a certified language expert, So whats next…’
Author has written a series of article to pursue as an alternate career option for Blogging/ Copywriting : All About Blogging, Blogging Insights, Tips for sustainable blogging, Alternate career: 3 Tips to finding your big idea, ‘Sneak a peak at copywriting as a career’.
About the author:
Meenakshi Chandrasekaran: I hold a degree in Bachelors of Computer Science Engineering, eventually landed up in a MNC and served the company as a software engineer for 4 years. Rediscovered my passion towards writing during my maternity break, broke my relationship with corporate and currently pursuing blogging as my career.
(The author is a guest blogger at Her Second Innings. The opinions expressed are those of the author.)
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