Feminism in its five waves so far experienced globally have seen the unleashing of shackles for men and women over the years across generations. Feminism as a higher consciousness from the patriarchal and paternalistic motivations for systems, cultural norms, mores and institutional functions has seeped into human thought and action. This is good. This must be contextually processed, owned and celebrated.
And yet, in Sri Lanka, there seems to be almost a stoic, sturdy exclusion and resistance to see child-rearing and parenthood - especially motherhood - as pro-feminist. In reality, the problem lies beyond the feminist agenda. Procreation choices of women especially find resistance and denigration in the inflexible systems that govern organizational administration and human resource management. It isn't only in the arena of organized formal labour that parenthood is dismissed as a critical element of a person's functionality. This is also overlooked as a critical factor that adds to the pressure of life, which in turn has a direct impact on the dignity, wellbeing and quality of life of people, especially on women (and on their children). The media has been rife with anecdotes of countless accidents and fatalities due to the pressures that parents currently deal with, heightened by a flailing economy, job insecurity and a raging global pandemic and restricted movement. The increase in the rate of divorce, the skyrocketing numbers of domestic abuse and gender-based violence, child cruelty and abuse are some outcomes of these pressures.
In recent years, the discourse has at least looked at female labour force participation. But it is disheartening to see that the discourse in fact ventures largely only to see women as efficient producers and workers, which bears better profits for the corporate machinery rather than organizations that embrace pro-choice and become inclusive of women's choices - ALL choices! In that sense, the discourse has been steered by a narrow understanding of feminism driven by the neo-liberal capitalistic agenda. This, in effect, does nothing to expand and include women's choices but rather confines their freedoms to reinforce patriarchy.
The largest corporate workforce in modern Sri Lanka is women. Be they garment factory workers, plantation workers or migrant labour. And yet, their value is only as far as their productivity is translated into exchange earnings and GDP. The larger component of the informal sector is also made up of women. The vast majority of the female labour force in Sri Lanka are or will be married and/or have/will have children. The feminist agenda has a great failing in that it is either uninformed or chooses not to see and work from that reality instead of a utopian conceptualization of feminist ideals.
More women today choose to work as they complete their schooling or university education. This is a very critical component in the unlocking of the matrix to further equality - i.e. financial independence of women. It is undeniably true and evidence-based that it has a domino effect in raising women's confidence and bargaining ability, idea formation and outlets for their creativity, the sense of dignity, which makes them want better for themselves and aspires for more. Many organizations and employers recognize this and have contributed positively to create progress in this sphere.
Later, as life progresses, many women choose to marry. It is much rarer these days that marriage alters women's professional ambitions. However, it is after working women have children that the trouble begins i.e. for those women concerned. Some feel compelled to stop working and stay at home to look after their children. Others are coerced and expected to fulfil a house-bound role by family. Still, others, choose to end their employment because it becomes difficult to pull in an eight to five and spend time travelling back and forth by public transport while also undertaking the responsibilities for their children. It is unfortunate that so many women are still expected to be the ones who will stop short of their careers once children enter the family dynamic. Whereas, parenting if at all bolsters and solidifies the justification for men's employment. This is most often an automatic expectation rather than an informed, willing choice by either parent. It is here that Sri Lanka loses a good percentage of its able workforce.
Concentrating on the women who find a way to return to the workforce or remain in employment even while bringing up their children, they face other bottlenecks. Needless to say, single-parent homes have different challenges where to work or not after children is rarely an option. Especially for so many female parents, there are obstacles to staying in lucrative work while also parenting. There is social censure or shame in either choice or both. It is not that single parents work any less or that their childrearing duties have hindered them from working (though this does happen). It is actually that the inflexibilities and inability to include the parenting reality into the work culture, protocol and office administration, as well as to be creative with how work gets done that has kept so many single parents harried and over-extended for years. This reality has repercussions on much more than a country's economy. It will extend to women's health realities and trends, adversely affect families and the generations who grow up with parents who simply have no rest and peace to be invested, parents. I dare say, this also has repercussions on child mental wellbeing, domestic violence and child cruelty as the pressure builds on single parents to play multiple roles, as well as an impact on children's nutrition, health and educational trajectories. Simply put, feminism should have a knock-on effect in every sphere that could contribute to people's wellbeing and human dignity.
20% or every 1 in 5 children in this country are from single-parent homes. The vast majority of these single-parent homes are female-headed. And yet women have to work to earn and feed their children. Organizations, even in my industry that call for the realization of the feminist agenda through the inculcation of feminist principles, do nothing practical to incorporate policy that extends their ideology to reality so that working (single) moms could be included. Feminism that stays on policy papers alone, disenfranchises, destabilizes and, in fact, disempowers the vast majority of women in Sri Lanka. Policy without practical action is utterly useless to women or men. Even when marriages, institutions, organizations, policies, governments, corporate administrations fail women, these single parents still find a way to show up to work or find a way to earn and feed their children. They often have no choice. Why is this still our reality? When in theory, I would offer that to do two jobs (one paid and one unpaid) just as well and to manage time and resources and juggle responsibilities make single parents somewhat more efficient and heroic than most. This isn't about celebrity status or victimhood. It is about practical reality.
If our society sees value in having women participate in the workforce and profit from their intellectual, physical or other skills, then every industry should make room for the realities in which they come from. If you want a physically disabled person to add value to your organization, you build a ramp for him to have access to the building and navigate the office space. Likewise, if you want women with children to be a part of the workforce, creating flexibility and different ways to be inclusive is a task that needs to be prioritized and operationalized, although inconvenient to do.
Interestingly, those who double down and meet the demands of the workplace and find ways to navigate and hide the reality of their kids and related circumstances that differentiate them from other colleagues, face other challenges that have serious implications to their self-esteem. So is it any wonder that women with children (and this is a significant number) would rather give up work and stay at home with their children? Let's face it if women dare to do a job for pay, and heaven forbid, should they fail at one or the other of these, they would be held to account by the feminist brigade as bringing it upon their heads for their reproductive choices and then by the employer for not being superhero enough to make both choices work! It is an impossibly awful predicament. Especially when many single female parents work without any other choice. This is an uninformed and desensitized form of feminism that I myself have encountered. The vast majority of feminists I have come across do not live the reality of most women in this country that they speak up for. So the contextual element of speaking truth to power is at least questionable to me.
It has to be pointed out that so many women with children are actually living the dream and doing it all and marking celebrated success after success. They should be lauded for this. I often and deliberately do. However, how many of these women can work to achieve what they achieve if they did not transfer parenting for at least several hours a day to another woman/person - to their mothers/fathers, sisters, neighbours, domestic workers or day-care staff or even to their work-from-home husbands while they are out there slaying dragons, high achieving and breaking the proverbial glass ceilings in their respective industries? How many of them are privileged enough to do so? Is that not a blind spot and exploitation of the patriarchal system that preaches success for the self by transfer of responsibility to/exploitation of another in an imperfect world and a third-world economy at that? This system of normalizing and exemplifying a minority of privileged women as the standard for all women with children is a dangerous standard that only benefits the patriarchy. It leaves so many women (as well as some men) in largely different circumstances, also with similar dreams and aspirations and no inclusive spaces to fulfil them, in the lurch. In desperation, they are left having to put themselves and their dependents in precarious circumstances just to eke out a living to support their families. This includes those with dead husbands, maimed partners, disappeared partners, those whose' partners are migrant workers; women who are divorced or separated and dependent on their income alone. These women often have no benefits, pension from a deceased spouse or partner, access to credit facilities from formal institutions, maintenance for children decreed by courts etc.
These women not only support and care for their children but also elderly parents or family members, even in-laws if their partners are working abroad or have run away with someone else. There often is a double standard formal workplaces hold women to, despite their vulnerability, and indeed sometimes because of their vulnerability.
Why is this mantle of responsibility borne by women not recognized by corporate and organizational administrations, or by governments? Not from a minority rights perspective - but rather as a growing proletariat of the mainstream population! It is also deplorable that child-rearing especially is clubbed together as "care work" when it entails so much more than looking after and maintaining a house. The house, the laundry, the home improvement projects, the cooking will be fine if left alone and neglected for a few days while women attend to office work or other livelihoods. Child rearing and taking care of other dependent family members are in another league altogether. For example, an infant or a minor child cannot be left alone at home or indeed left when there are a pandemic and schools close or a child is ill. The burden is felt in all families by the female parent, but in single-parent homes all the more. Do our policymakers, our employers understand that? If not, why not?
Most often in the urban corporate world, single parents, especially female parents, find it difficult to carry on a continuous career without breaks or multiple changes in how they negotiate to work because of the rigid inflexibility towards including parental realities. This reality should extend far beyond maternal and paternal leave and rather an invested restructure of how men and women who are parents can remain in the workforce and work with satisfaction and efficiency knowing they work for employers who are inclusive and creative, and actually want them to be there. Currently, the vast majority of corporate employers are simply not aware or switched on enough to make this happen or to be sensitive to the realities of their employees. Far worse, women who resist these strictures or agitate by asking for a leave or to attend a school prize giving or take elderly parents or a severely ill child to the hospital are seen in the workplace as slackers and disruptors and are less prone to promotion, leadership roles and access to benefits.
The global pandemic has only made this reality all the worse for women. As a consultant writer in the capital city, working from home with the psychological peace of knowing my children were safe and home with me, actually let me work, home-school, and catch a break as well (without having to drive for four hours every day for school drops, pickups, office runs and general chores). So many women were not so fortunate and the lockdown affected their already struggling home economy, especially women with young children who relied on schools and day-care facilities or babysitting favours from family and neighbours to access markets or travel to buy and sell wares or simply to go to work. Many people, including women, lost their jobs or took pay cuts to keep their employment.
During the pandemic curfew in 2020, I together with like-minded friends and family, worked to spin ideas that would help other women in remote villages in Sri Lanka to promote their home-grown and packaged produce in the online business space. We sought ways in which we could support these women to make the most of a tough situation so that they can expand their markets, diversify products, learn basic IT, inventory management, bookkeeping and marketing skills to grow their businesses and stabilize themselves. Some women have jumped in on this but it is not the only or most feasible solution for so many.
The virtual space is a largely unexplored frontier that a lot of patriarchal and ageing organizations are afraid of because of their ignorance. However, I suspect the resistance is also because it is a great equalizer and ups the ante on competitiveness and product quality. As a level playing field brings more women producers, sellers and women-led businesses into the market-share, this will naturally threaten toxic masculinities in Sri Lanka and the spaces they have hegemonically occupied for decades. I suppose archaic policy and inflexible work cultures is one way to prevent confronting this insecurity and to fight progress. Technology and social media has expanded avenues for some parents, especially single-parent households and has become an answer to the question of inclusivity. However, not all female labour is entrepreneurial or desire to be entrepreneurs or have the skills or desire to work in virtual market places.
I never lose sight of the fact that, given my education, background, skill set, experience and location of residence, I am more fortunate and privileged than most other single parents. This is why I want to draw attention to this reality for so many and make workplaces and spaces fairer and equitable for all. This is not so yet largely because of a lack of awareness, uninformed choices and a deep lack of empathy on the part of employers. The domestic realities of the management should not determine the work culture of the employees. It is a form of discrimination and industries that speak of progress, incredibly just don't seem to see their blind spots.
The right response is not to be ideologically militant, unaware and uninformed and shame and ridicule women who make choices to procreate. All of nature procreates. The more proactive engagement of aware and informed feminism should be to find ways to include women regardless of their choices to marry/not marry, procreate/not procreate, parent/not parent. This is the inclusive feminism that should pervade our formal workplaces, corporates and government institutions. Work and workspaces need to be inclusive of all. No mother or father needs to feel less than for having other people to be responsible for or accountable to. As a working single parent, I am aware that there are so many people who belong to the category I represent. But I am yet to see a single organization, even in my industry that preaches academic forms of feminist ideology that is bold enough to walk the talk in actions that make workspaces inclusive through adequately flexible systems in place. Albeit, the purpose of flexibility is to draw out the best productivity of employees while making it possible for them to do so while also being invested, parents. I think it's time to hold organizations accountable to this standard.
The next time an organization puts out an advertisement to recruit and places the fashionable tag line "[X organization] is a non-discriminatory employer" I hope they make sure they are willing to be challenged on that in reality.
The critical questions an organization needs to be asking are how much do we value female labour enough to find ways to hold on to them? How do we enable an environment where parents can give the best of their professional capacities to an employer unceasingly while being encouraged to be efficient parents as well? What can companies do to retain their female staff and how do they factor in the realities of social and cultural life into work culture and human resource management practices? Let's keep on fighting to make wrongs right and systems more efficient and inclusive for all. This may not be a one-size-fits-all form of policy or practice. However, the dialogue needs to occur and expand. It is high time we wrestle with this issue and it becomes a glaring priority for employers and policymakers as well.
