Aren’t you amused when you hear talk of how some professions and roles are ‘right’ for women? “Of course you’ll choose HR. Women are good at it.” “Get a bank job – no tension and you can get home in time.” “Become a teacher, it’s so easy.”
It seems like there’s no dearth of jobs ‘fit’ for women. And no dearth of opinions on what women should do. Besides, you can do whatever you want to do, provided you’re home in time to look after the family.
Do women feel the same? A belief that there are specific jobs that women are better at than men? I often wonder about that. That is not to say that they don’t enjoy the roles they occupy. I rather like the idea of this embracing form of feminism that we practise in our country. It urges us to be a strong woman regardless of the role you play- mother, daughter, wife, significant other.
Maxine W.Kumin begins her wonderfully elaborate and engaging Sonnets Uncorseted by describing the life and times of Margaret Cavendish – the writer, philosopher, activist and scientist. The poet then goes on to speak of her experiences, college in the 1940s that comprised, “Male novelists, male profs, male tutors…”, to her struggles with finding the right theme for her poetry, “Terrified of writing domestic poems/poems pungent with motherhood… /somehow I balanced teaching freshman comp/half-time with kids, meals, pets, errands, spouse.” Women poets have to deal with obnoxious men, “Modern/women poets were dismissed as immature/their poems pink with the glisten of female organs.” While the poets feel the disdain, they are, “now infected with ambition.” Maxine W.Kumin ends with a plea to Margaret Cavendish, asking her to, “Come to this apex of tenured women professors/ where sessions on gender and race fill whole semesters/ and students immerse themselves in women’s studies./ Meet famous poets who are also unabashed mothers/ or singletons by choice or same-sex partners—/black, Latina, Asian, native American,/ white , Christian, Muslim, Jew and atheist—/come join us, Duchess Margaret Cavendish.” This is a poem that struck a chord with me in more ways than one.
Even a math-averse person like me can appreciate the beauty in Numbers. Mary Cornish speaks of the, “generosity of numbers.” How, “they are willing to count anything or anyone.” She says, “Even subtraction is never loss/ just addition somewhere else: / five sparrows take away two/ the two in someone else’s/ garden now.” But as much as there’s normalcy and safety in numbers (pun intended), there’s also the, “odd remainder/ footloose at the end: forty-seven divided by eleven equals four/ with three remaining./ Three boys beyond their mother’s call/ two Italians off to the sea/ one sock that isn’t anywhere you look.” Very rarely, at least to me, have numbers seemed so expressive.
In Flying Lesson, Dolores Hayden enumerates the cloud formations and how it’s important to, “Read a cloud/ decode it/ a dense, chilly mass/ can shift, flood with light. Watch for clouds closing under you/ the sky opens in a breath/ shuts in a heartbeat.” Women can stay grounded, even as they soar.
I speak for women everywhere when I say that women decide what they want to do – to work or not to, to write or not, to be a parent or not.
She could be a mathematician, a baker, a dress-maker, a student, a preacher, a fabulous teacher, she could stay at home and read all day or keep an eye out for her child at play. As long as it’s something she wants to do, what is it, to me and to you?
Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.com
