Women at work!!

Were women meant to work to earn a living and support a family?
Feminists may not want to get into this discussion, preferring to go with the larger view of women having the choice to decide whether or not they want to work. Even that is wrong. Feminists would say they should have the choice to work, for it will undermine their own cause if they added that the choice of not working is built into the idea of making choices!
Whatever that may be, after working for 32 years --both at home, without any major help--and as a career woman, I have begun to envy those who are "ladies of leisure"--mistresses of their time. Perhaps the grass on the other side is always greener, for most of my "only housewife" friends who have now learnt to call themselves "home-makers" as their American sisters and brothers have taught them to say, dare me to live one day happily without going to work. I don't know what drudgery staying home the whole day can be, they tell me.
But most of my working women friends my age or a bit older have either opted for voluntary retirement, or were happy to hang up their sandals or sneakers. And no-- none of them has chosen to go into some other line of business, enjoying their time watching films or even tv soaps, doing a bit of social outreach work that may not make it to magazine pages, meet as often as possible at unpretentious places over great conversation, take in the dastkari exhibitions, flower shows, the cultural programmes that are open for all and the like. This includes enjoying small things like baking a cake or making kheer, actually spreading out that beautiful hand-embroidered bed spread tucked away carefully all these years !! Going for walks regularly and a picnic once in a while. My sister Nalini, a very successful radiation oncologist whose patients can't have enough of her, too would like to "retire"--not because of the morbid hospital atmosphere, but just to find time for herself.
But I've hardly come across a man who's dying to call it a day, and sit home to do nothing. When my photographer husband had a two-year break, he did more than click pictures. He built the most picturesque house that I lightly, but seriously say, comes a notch above the Taj.May be less beautiful depending on who the beholder is, but being a home and not a makbara, is infinitely lively and colourful. And that done, he got back to a more hectic job than he had before he took a voluntary retirement to avoid working with an unpleasant boss! Similar has been my observation of other men I know--even when the body is no longer willing, many old journalists come to the Press Club, important events etc, and file their stories for one or the other publication that will print them--most often for no payment. These men just like the idea that they are working !!
That is perhaps why men were meant to work and support families, and women to do lighter wrok, at home, at leisure. No matter what housewives, including my mother who now calls herself a home maker,believes !!