Why do fewer women go to work? || Acharya Prashant, at AIIMS Nagpur (2022)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00A very good evening, sir. Sir, according to World Bank, out of the total economic growth

00:08of India, women contribute only 17%. But their Chinese counterpart contribute 40% to their

00:16nation. As we are aiming to be a $5 trillion economic country in the near future, what

00:22we as an Indian society can do to enhance the economic women workforce in our country

00:29apart from the education sector. If I get you right, what you are saying is that compared

00:36to Chinese women, Indian women contribute far less to the Indian economy in percentage

00:45terms. That's what you are saying? That's what you are saying? Okay. So you are saying

00:49how to amend that. See, how do you expect somebody to express herself, to go out, work,

01:05produce something worthwhile? If you have defined her value by the time and energy she

01:19puts in keeping your home and raising your kids, if that's how the society is going to

01:29assess the worth of a woman, what incentive does she have to go out and work? What are

01:38you telling your women? You are telling them, you stay at home, you take good care of the

01:46nest, you be a nice mother and we will call you respect. We will say, see how good a homemaker

02:00she is and she is doing all the fabulous things and this and that. Now if this is how her

02:07worth is to be determined, both economic and psychological, then tell me what is the incentive

02:14to go out and work? Even women with great professional degrees in India, coming out

02:22from IITs, IIMs, they decide to sit at home, many of them obviously, not all of them. They

02:30decide to sit at home after a point and they say this is fine. Why is this not fine? Because

02:39the husband is earning and my worth is being determined by several factors other than my

02:46economic productivity. So why do I need to take all the hassles and go out in the sun

02:53and brave the heat and hit the road and do something? I will give you a very dangerous

03:00statistic. Have you heard of something called female labour participation rate? Have you

03:08heard of it? It refers to the percentage of women who are out there working and earning.

03:23So we say the economy has liberalised, the Indian economy. We say Indians are much more

03:30liberal even in mind today. We say there are far more institutes of professional education

03:44today than there were 20 years back. There are just too many seats now and the percentage

03:55of women entering those institutions has also increased. We say the girl of today

04:05is very, very forward looking. These are the things that we say. Having said all these

04:10things, what do you expect regarding the number of working women today vis-a-vis the number

04:19of working women that were there 20 or 30 years back? What would you expect? What would

04:26you expect? Tell me. Ok, let me say. If there were 100 women working in 1980 or 1990, what

04:40would you expect be the number in 2022? What number would you expect? Thousand? Yes? Yes?

04:58The number is only slightly greater than 100 and in percentage terms it has actually dropped

05:06steeply. Percentage of the total population because the female population itself has

05:11increased over the last 30 years. As a percentage of the population, the FLPR has actually dropped

05:18and is dropping every year. Women are getting educated and empowered and everything and are

05:25choosing to sit at home. And when they were not so educated and not so empowered, empowered

05:30in courts, they were actually going out to work. Now why is this happening? This is so

05:38counter-intuitive and mind-boggling, is it not? How is it possible that women with all

05:43the opportunities available to them today, with all the education that is available to

05:46them today, qualified women and knowledgeable women, they are opting to sit at home. What

05:53is happening? What is happening is that the husband's income has increased and the husband

06:01and the wife mutually decide that now that you are earning enough, why do I go out? And

06:10this is a mutual decision, mind you. Okay, I was working for 3 years post-marriage but

06:18now that the baby has come, why do I need to work anymore? Or I take a break from work

06:26to take care of the baby and I think that I will return after a year and I never return.

06:30Because the home is such a comfortable place. Let's face it. The home is such a comfortable

06:37place especially if there is sufficient money at home. We might say that the labour participation

06:49rate will increase if there is more security in the workplace, if the workplace conditions

06:57are made more favourable for women and those arguments do hold some weight, I fully agree.

07:03I agree that some women do not go to work because workplaces are unsafe or because workplaces

07:08are not paying them enough or there is discrimination at workplace, so some women are not going

07:13to work. But tell me, was there lesser discrimination in 1985? Then how is it possible that more

07:20and more women, educated women, empowered women, are opting to sit at home? This is

07:28again the Prakritic tendency. What does Mother Prakriti tell you? She tells you that the

07:37purpose of your life is relaxation and consumption. Now if relaxation and consumption are happily,

07:46coolly available at home, why work? And that's the same thing that even a man would do. Today,

07:54somebody comes and puts 100 crore in your bank account. There would be many amongst

08:00you who might decide to opt out of this program and just sit and lead a happy life. Intellectually

08:07if you think about it, you might not agree. You will say, no, no, no, I am not like that.

08:13But when it happens, when you know that you have easy access to comfortable money, then

08:23there is no incentive to work. I am not saying that is the case with all women, but increasingly

08:32a large cross-section of women are following this route and it is a very, very dangerous

08:40route, very dangerous route. How do you change this situation? By changing the thought that

08:52consumption is the purpose of life. That lying down on the bed, munching expensive

09:00fries and watching Netflix is the highest pleasure that life can give you. Obviously

09:10wearing diamond jewellery. Can you imagine? Now if you have been trained to think that

09:15this is the pinnacle of life. A diamond bracelet, an expensive bed, wonderful air conditioning,

09:24a large room full of amenities, a 200 inch TV and you are watching the spicy program

09:34of your choice. Many of us would salivate at this prospect. Wish life were like this.

09:42This is hell. This is not the kind of life to be desired. This exactly is the picture

09:50of hell. Hell is where you don't have to work. Hell is where you don't have any purpose

09:59to life. Any purpose worth exerting yourself for, worth laying down your life for, that

10:06is hell. More and more media, education, the entire culture is feeding this into our

10:19mind that you exist just to be happy. And where does happiness come from? More and more

10:25consumption. More furniture, a bigger car, five houses, a foreign vacation. We are being

10:34told that we exist not for our liberation but for consumption. And if consumption can

10:41be somehow available for free, then why work at all? Because consumption is anyway the

10:47end purpose. It's just that the things that are going to be available to you for consumption,

10:54they never come for free. They come at the cost of your entire life. And being a woman

11:01you know very well why somebody would give you easy access to his money and his property.

11:07You know that, don't you? It's the body that is being sold for the money. That kind of

11:16life is despicable. That is worse than hell, I say. Are you getting it? What kind of liberation

11:27can be there if you are dependent on somebody else even for your physical survival? What

11:37kind of freedom is possible if you don't have even two rupees of your own and then you say

11:41his money is my money? So if you want to change this situation, if you really want more women

11:52to come out and make a mark in life, then you have to first of all challenge the over-arcing

12:01philosophy, the dominant narrative of this day. It is a very, very poisonous narrative.

12:10Capitalistic consumerism. Have money, consume. Have money, consume. It puts no emphasis on

12:18right work. In fact, it says that you are in the greatest position if you can consume

12:26a lot without having to exert even a little. That is the reason why everybody wants to

12:34have very nefarious sources of money. Because ultimately it's the money and the consumption

12:43that counts, not the source of money. How does it matter where the money is coming from?

12:48I can lie, cheat, kill, murder. I should get something to consume. I can sell my life provided

12:57the buyer feeds me with gold. Challenge this narrative, challenge this narrative. Otherwise

13:12this narrative will keep more and more women at home because the economy is progressing

13:26and men are getting richer. And as you get richer, you want to indulge in certain luxuries.

13:39One of the luxuries is keep the woman permanently at home. It's a luxury of life. I keep my

13:46girl at home. She is always available at my beck and call. If she goes out, who knows

13:51what may happen. She may taste freedom, she may taste success of her own. She may develop

13:57a life of her own. And who knows, if she goes out, she may actually go away from me. So

14:03it is great that she stays at home. I will provide for her. I will give her whatever

14:06she needs. Anyway the property remains mostly in the male's name. You very well know that

14:17women own less than 3% of the world's assets. They don't own anything. They are just given

14:24something. Why do you want to adjust to this situation? Do you want to? Do you want to

14:33be given something on a weekly or monthly basis from somebody else's bank account? The

14:40property belongs to somebody else. But he says, whenever you will ask me something darling,

14:45I will give it to you. Is this an honourable situation? Yes. Unfortunately more and more

14:54Indian women are falling for it because in absence of any kind of wisdom, it is the pop

15:01philosophy that is ruling our minds. We have no Vedanta in our life. We have nothing called

15:09wisdom literature in our life. Then what is the philosophy that rules our mind? It

15:17is the philosophy that comes to us from social media, from television. When you are watching

15:21a commercial or when you are watching a movie or anything that you are watching, it is not

15:30merely a picture or a video or an audio. It is a philosophical package. And when you are

15:38watching that, you do not even know that you are actually buying into that philosophical

15:43package. Apparently, it is just the shape of the woman on Instagram and that's what

15:50you are keenly watching. It's good fun. It's not just the shape of the woman's body in

15:56that post. It is a philosophy that you have bought into and it's a very toxic philosophy.

16:03But we do not come to know of that in that moment because in that moment, under the impact

16:12of lust and ignorance, our discretion takes a back seat. There is so much glamour on the

16:21screen. How will you even know that you are being indoctrinated? To know that you are

16:27being indoctrinated, you need to be conscious. And the first thing that media does is that

16:32it makes you unconscious with songs, with all the spice. And when you are unconscious,

16:41then you can absorb anything, anything. And that which you absorb becomes your life.

16:47Am I going too fast for you or too ahead of you? I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible.

17:08And it's actually simple. There is nothing complicated in this, right? A lot of this

17:13that I'm saying, I understood it even when I was your age. So there is no great complexity

17:20here. Sir, like you were saying in the middle of

17:26the discussion, like many women from so-called well-known institutions with holding a very

17:33good degree, they sit back at home and because their husband earned some good money, they

17:42stop working and lie, sit at home doing nothing. But like there is another perspective to it.

17:53Many a times it happens also because they do not have interest in what work they were

17:58doing. Like I will give you one personal example. There is a relative at my own house. She is

18:10doing a job currently, but I can see that she does not have an interest in, great interest

18:16in it. Even if she doesn't work, it is not going to make any huge difference. But you

18:24know, she does not have any interest working from day and night. She is looking for holidays

18:30or whatever, whatever things like that. So it is, is it very sensible to say that just

18:39because her husband is earning more, so they do not want to work?

18:44If there is nobody to feed you and you are not very interested in your job, will you

18:48still leave your job? No, like…

18:51No, wait, answer this. Nobody is fully interested in his or her job. Even men are not very interested

18:59in their jobs. Nobody is. Do they leave their jobs and sit at home? They won't because

19:06they know there is nobody to feed them. So it is the presence of the other party ready

19:13to feed you, which is the primary factor in you saying, oh I am not interested, therefore

19:18I am dropping out. Nobody is interested. Are you fully interested in your MBBS course?

19:23Nobody is 100% interested. Wait. Nobody is fully interested. Why don't you drop out

19:29then? Because you have something to take care of, because there is a deep responsibility

19:36towards something. When you give up that responsibility, then you can say, oh I am not interested.

19:43Even I am not extremely or absolutely interested in talking to you, what do I do? Run away?

19:49Nothing is absolute in this world. If you will ask me, am I 100% invested in this conversation,

19:53I am not. But certain things are done because they need to be done.

19:58Then isn't it like, you were earlier saying like a biological mandate, it seems to be

20:05like a mandate, you know…

20:07The mandate is liberation and you cannot be liberated if you are dependent on somebody

20:13else to feed your stomach. So if you are disinterested in your work, then your responsibility is

20:20to go out and create the right work for yourself. This is a very bad apology. I am disinterested

20:25in the work, so I am sitting at home. If you are disinterested and you are being true to

20:29yourself, go out and create an alternate work. First of all try to find the right work for

20:35yourself and if you cannot find it, then create it. What is this behavior? I am not interested,

20:42so I will sit at home, now you feed me. Now you feed me. The day he stops feeding, all

20:48your disinterest will vanish. Then you will go out and pick up whatever job is available,

20:54irrespective of your interest or lack of it. So this is a very bad apology. Don't be fooled by it.

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