Our institutions of higher learning cannot complain that women do not come forward for various courses. The fact is that our universities, science laboratories and colleges admit a fair percentage of women.
These members of the opposite sex successfully compete with men, get degrees at convocations but then pass into oblivion.
Why is it that few women succeed intellectually? Are they inferior to men? Is it because that right from childhood they are fed on the notion that marriage is their destiny? That success in intellectual fields brings no rewards, that it raises hurdles in the fulfillment of their role as wives.
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Notions about manage are the greatest handicap our women face in the fulfillment of their roles as intellectuals. Marriage is the end and be all of their existence. A woman who chooses to stay single, or remains unmarried for one or the other reason, is looked upon as a freak. She is subnormal or abnormal. No normal woman can do without marriage. This is male thinking.
What about a bachelor? Well! He is a gay guy! Here is a vital clue to the so-called intellectual inferiority of woman. She is not inferior. If she appears inferior, it is because she is not allowed to think like an intellectual. The male ego begins to bleed. All kinds of spurious arguments are invented and advanced to keep her under the mental thumb.
Even if one concedes that there are differences in capacity and in achievement, it cannot be winked away that the differences are blown out of proportion. That, by and large, women remain tied to the apron strings of the male psychology.
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From the day a girl begins to understand the criss-cross currents of humdrum life, she is made to understand that independence of mind, intellectual aspiration and pursuing a career without a husband, amounts to blasting her femininity. The unspoken slogan seems to be: Dear girl, get the boy, get a house, marry him, get a brood. Tomorrow it might be too late.
When the girls grow up, they are naturally obsessed with an equally fallacious notion of femininity. This notion of femininity is their final and unfailing passport to happiness. It can be summed up like this: The male is your master physically, mentally, intellectually.
It is your duty to obey him, let him dominate you. Your existence is only an extension of his existence. He is the substance. You are the shadow. You have to cook to please him. The way to his heart lies through his stomach.
You must dress to please him. You have to shed extra pounds lest he should begin to chase other women. You have to spill smiles when he is around and laugh however silly and stale his jokes and mind you, you have to be sexy best when in his company.