Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Whoever wrote that must be regretting. And if the origins of the men and women are different planets, what are they doing on Earth together? This uneasy question marked the evolution of human civilisation. Ever since men took to farming about 12000 years ago, the gender divide has grown more pronounced. With men endowed with physical superiority and the fact that fruits needed to be plucked from heights, game hunted with brutal muscular force from the wilderness and hardened land broken with bare hands, women have been at a disadvantage. They ended up being trophies, comfort dolls and baby makers. The homemaker is the other euphemism. This gender hierarchy seemed fine for many millennia, with everyone knowing their place and how to be an ideal woman or woman. However, this social construct had an ugly drawback, like a balloon —squeezed in half by a knotty thread—trying to reach its full size. It wasted the potential of the other half. Half the processing power of humanity remained switched off.
If we examine the history of human civilisation with a wide lens, three epochal revolutions are salient: the invention of national boundaries, the Industrial Revolution, and the Universal Franchise. All politics, trade wars, and the exploitation of natural resources stemmed from the first two, and these are still at their cutthroat pace. The Universal Franchise may be the only positive system that has been unequivocally accepted without much demure.
In much of the world, gaining the right to vote has mainly benefitted women and slaves. Though we take universal franchises for granted, this is a relatively recent trend. For instance, the last country to allow women to vote and run for public office was Saudi Arabia in 2015. In India, the Constitution adopted it in 1950.
In the early Industrial Revolution, factory-centered workfloors pushed women further into their kitchens. It was only later that political empowerment accrued from voting rights paved the way for women to venture into the world of work. Little by little, in baby steps, governments and corporations introduced women-friendly work environments and policies like paid maternity leave, office creches and diversity in recruitment. Women started sharing office cubicles with men, and few women struggled to break the glass ceilings and achieve honcho positions at the top. Currently, women’s participation in the global workforce is 50% (a pretty figure). In the US, women have surpassed men at 57.5%.
What factors led to the rise of the widespread feminine workforce? The changing nature of work is one crucial reason. Work is no longer labour-intensive and has shifted from mechanical to creativity, customer relationships, and services. Mechanical jobs, the manufacturing process, and the mining of minerals have been automated, requiring only a few male hands and many robotic equipment. The workplace has become flat, with equal opportunities for both genders.
The second factor is the growing acceptance of remote and hybrid work, first experimented during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The experience proved educational for the employers and confirmed what was apparent all along: that employees’ physical presence at office buildings to stare at the computer screen for eight hours was a bulshit ritual. This shift in attitude was a godsend for women whose main handicaps are commuting long, often unsafe distances, childcare responsibilities, and working odd hours. The work-at-home option alleviates these women-centric issues and opens up choices for them.
Thirdly, as the manufacturing and manual labour sector increasingly relies on automation, the soft skills of women are valuable in an age when brand positioning and loyalty become essential for companies to differentiate from the crowd. “This is Sephali from Clients’ Services. How may I help you, Sir,” sounds more welcoming than a prerecorded IVR or the baritone voice of a male executive that gives you 911 vibes. Women are generally empathetic, more patient and pleasant to seek help from. In theory, the work of doctors can be automated by AI, but ChatGPT or robots will hardly replace the caregiving jobs of nurses and their human touch. Women are more nurturing, and in this crazy, strife-torn world, we need more feminine energy in hospitals, schools, playgrounds, and even in military services.
In fact, military forces will likely open their masochistic gates to the women drone fighters, analysts, negotiators or interrogators. As we all know, modern warfare is not fought on the battlegrounds soaked in dirt and trenches but conducted from war rooms full of screens beaming live feeds from bombing targets carried out by high-tech killing machines as in video games. The future warfare may be fought by male and female couch potatoes while watching Netflix.
Further, the AI revolution levels the playing field and provides equal access to tools that don’t distinguish between users’ genders. Already, women are taking advantage of AI in the social media space, where content is king, and women do become influencers more quickly than men by a wide margin of followers.
If the offices looked like shoeboxes with grey wall paintings decades ago, the new version would look much more petite, homely, and pink. As pink becomes the new colour code of modern offices, metaphorically speaking, the Mad Men era of treating women as accessories at the reception counters is coming to an end. Indeed, it’s a good time to be a woman. Laws are more sympathetic to the damsel-in-distress stories, and husbands are more accommodative of female ambitions than ever. Then, what could go wrong?
The sore thumb is the gender pay gap. Women’s 50% participation in the workforce is meaningless if their earnings are not commensurate with their contributions. Unfortunately, this is true. According to the World Bank, pay disparity is high, and only 60.5% of the pay gap is closed as of 2024, i.e., women earn about 40% less than their male counterparts for the same job.
Economists have also highlighted another explanation for women’s lower earnings. They fault the women’s choice of subjects in their colleges. Education is not enough by itself. What matters is the type of expertise women acquire in the classrooms and labs. Fewer women specialise in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects, and since most of the high-paying jobs are in the tech industry, where Albert Einstein counts more than the poetry of Emily Dickinson, women’s pie in the salary cake gets smaller. This correlation manifests itself in the real world. In Nordic countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway, the policy of encouraging STEM studies by women has reaped dividends. In these countries, the pay parity is egalitarian, and the gap is almost closed, above 93%. The lesson here is: if you are a girl, opt for STEM subjects that may land you a high-paying job and leadership role within the organisation and society. (Women’s political leadership, as assessed by the number of women parliamentarians, is woefully lower at 26.5%).
Another serious issue for women is whether to prioritise professional success or personal fulfilment by focusing on family. There is no clear and easy answer to this. It is a deeply personal decision for a woman to make and weigh.
Before I sign off, here’s a corny joke. It is said that a man’s best friend is a dog, but the enemy of a woman is another woman. While trying to be feminists and attack the patriarchal system, somewhere along the way, women have stopped looking out for each other’s backs. The unseen challenges to women’s empowerment lie within. Time to exorcise them, dear Mams and Moms.