The New Equation

I wonder what it is going to be like to redefine the world as humankind has known it all these centuries. That is what my life is going to be about. I’m a woman and my gender is going to create a new world.

That is what thousands of women across the world, born to education and comfortable living are being groomed for. Good grades, higher education, certificates and medals and prizes are all stepping stones to the ladder to success. On the way we’ve been taught self-reliance, independent thinking and rationale. We’ve been trained in modern-day Spartan ways and ingrained in us are such platitudes as “To compete with a man, you have to be better than him”, “Men will try to possess you, use their follies against them”. Unfortunately for the world and for us, we’ve also learnt cruelty, bitchiness, ruthlessness and cold success-at-any-cost-ambition.

I know women are going to take over the world. It will happen in my generation. The path has been laid by generations of women before us – the first women who demanded and got a vote, the first ones to study and send their daughters to school, the first ones who went out and worked along with their men, these were women who demanded an equal status in society. My generation heralds a new era – women who demand not acceptance but equality. Perhaps we are capable of it or maybe we are not. The question is how will our natural beginner’s mistakes alter the world?

For example, this changes the equations in a marriage and later, in parenthood completely. Since biologically we are still the ones who will do the actual, physical deliveries, maternity leaves and morning sickness and the like will have to be included within the power equations of the working world. If more and more ambitious women decide to postpone or decline pregnancy altogether, what will that do to the demographics of that layer of society? Moreover with the high stress conditions induced by such a lifestyle, what will be the impact on the children born to this generation of women?

The other important aspect is where do men figure in all of this? If the human race will survive this, then it will be because men will learn to adapt to the new conditions. Perhaps they already are. I can see that men are making much better fathers than their forefathers were. Now it remains to be seen whether they will also make good husbands, partners, colleagues, friends than their historical counterparts.

Perhaps the future of the world is still in the men’s hands. After all, we’re driving this world forward, with a ‘Learners’ board on the window. And the men are the experts sitting in the passenger seats, waiting and watching where we’re driving them to.