The Plight of Modern Family; Gender Equality and contemporary changes

The human society is comprised of men and women. The society has given specific roles based on the gender which has now changed dramatically. Both men and women go out for work and provide financial support for the family. This is mainly because of the economic conditions which force women to earn and the high educational and professional standards of modern women.

In the ancient pre-historic world, men go hunting or forging while women stay at home caring for children and doing other household chores. Human physique had adapted to that lifestyle as well. A woman can do patient work such as weaving, creating artifacts etc and she can endure longer than man. On the other hand, man can unleash massive energy for a short period of time helping him to pursue and kill animals. Almost all of the human races were patriarchal. There was no place for women other than home. Education of women is neglected but the knowhow of doing household work had passed down from mother to daughter. The slightest of improvements for the working of women happens in the 19^th century western world. Women were allowed to work as governesses for children of wealthy households. Poor woman were also recruited as factory workers and laborers to fuel the growing demand for labor in the newly industrialized economy. But prostitution being the world’s oldest job welcomed women with open hands as it always does even now. Apart from those, economic contribution of the women for a society was very limited. Although Sri Lankan women are somewhat liberated than their other Asian counterparts, women going to work was an alien concept for the conservative Sri Lankan society.

In the modern society, women had defied the traditional gender roles. The main reason for this revolution was improved education standards for girls. In Sri Lanka and throughout the world, schools are established for both sexes. Sometimes, women outperform men in education field. In Sri Lanka this scenario is well observed. Since independence Sri Lankan women are coming out of their typical job roles specified to them (schoolteachers, clerks etc) into engineering, finance, manufacturing and entrepreneurship. With the universal suffrage, women have their political freedom so it is not a surprise at all to see a Sri Lankan woman becoming the world’s first female prime minister. Now Sri Lankan women are pushing their independence to the limits as discussions on men-women equality and feminism being carried out.

This newly found independence has an immense impact on the typical role of woman in the society. In the past a woman had always been under the protection of her father, husband and elder son in various stages of life but now they have financial and sexual independence. It is up to them to decide whether to get married to a man or to get married to a job. Even in Sri Lanka, highly educated high achieving young women belong to late 80s and early 90s generation tend not to get married or to set aside their marriage until they get elevated in educational and professional life. Sometimes young women who get married don’t like to have children. Even if they have children, family duties are most of the time put in a second place making room for educational or career obligations.

Women must have their independence. We can’t turn the clock and go to a medieval society again. Financial contribution of a mother in a family is needed like never before in this economically hard times. Giving financial and personal independence is not a bad practice since it gives some sort of self-esteem to women. At least girls should have opportunities to apply the knowledge they have gained from education to the national economy.

Temporary Solutions

Flexible work schedules can be introduced by employers. Of course, maternity leave is grated for women at childbirth but that is not a guarantee that the woman may have quality time for her family. Standard 9 to 5 office schedule should be replaced with the permission to come and go to office at any time. Modern Information Technology (IT) companies are adapting this practice. It is much easier for them to emphasize on flexible schedule because all those organizations have target oriented work pattern. For them, all that matters is you have completing your work before deadline. When, where and how you are going to do your assigned work is not important. This helps a woman who is a mother and a wife to adjust her time according to family obligations. Company policies regarding women also need a change allowing more flexible times, reduced workloads and ‘work from home’ opportunities

Giving reduced workload for women employees is also among discussion but that raises questions about salary. Employers are reluctant to pay the same salary for a woman who is doing less work than her male counterpart. Although this practice goes against gender equality, it is much better than women working all day long without having time for her family.

Work from home is another alternative to smooth up to busy work schedule of modern professional. This doesn’t mean that you are always in doing whatever the task assigned to you in home. Regular visits to workplace may be needed but combined with flexible work schedules, this is a good solution. Development in IT field has broken the time and distance barrier. An employee can connect to office computer network form her Laptop or home computer. Video conferencing can be used to communicate with people anywhere in the world so time is dramatically saved. A busy mom can look after her child and do household chores even while she is doing her office work. She can do her work at night or early in the morning with the comfort of her cozy home.

What lies ahead?

All the above mentioned solutions are temporary. With the diminishing of the gender roles the concept of family may be abrogated in a couple of generations (it has already happening). Human society is in constant evolution. It is inevitable that traditional gender roles will soon be wiped out and we may come to the age that we no longer distinguish men and women as their contribution to the society and economy is more of less becomes the same.

We need to set aside the traditional beliefs that a family makes a person complete and it is needed to the personality development of a child. More and more single parent homes and artificial insemination pregnancies and surrogate motherhood gives both men and women to procreate without the express help of the other gender making the ultimate independence of sexes form each other and freeing them from the burdens of the family.

Whether the conservatives like it or not, it is inevitable that family, as an institution is failing as the concept of marriage has already failed. Embracing a and preparing for a future with enhanced personal independence, diminished gender roles and less and less family and emotional ties should be the wise thing to do. 

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Population Crisis; What shall we do?

World’s population is now more than 7 billion and rising rapidly. It has reached that point one year ago in October 2011. As humans, we have an immense impact on planet earth so complications arise naturally with the rising population. Overpopulation is now a major challenge to the long list of obstacles faced by humankind.

Throughout the human history, overpopulation has never been a problem before. Humans like all the other species need resources to survive. If a species have access to plenty of resources, it thrives while that species is starved of resources, its population declines or probably faces extinction (like what happened to Dinosaurs). Usually balancing the population of species is done by nature itself. Story of human population is somewhat different. Until the first half of the last century, the human population stayed under 2 billion. Due to the rapid growth it only took another half a century to nearly triple that population.

We generally think that adding more and more members to our huge human family is a good thing but as any species needs certain resources such as air, food, water and habitat to live, humans also needs those basic necessities and much more to survive and human needs and expectations are getting bigger and bigger every day. Throughout the last 50 years, expansion of quantity and quality of necessities such as energy, transportation, housing leads to perfect condition for a human population boom. Although population rise started with the industrial revolution in the 19^th century, only after the World War 2, it started skyrocketing.

Humans to generate wealth industry, production and economic activity are needed. Those needs more people. With additional wealth humans can breed and feed a new generation which helps to create more and more wealth. This cycle continues to function perfectly until couple of decades before the last century ends.

Above mentioned economic model is obsolete nowadays due to two reasons.

1.       We don’t need much labor and human skills to generate wealth. Smart technologies, industries and production don’t need much labor. The way we create wealth is also changed. World relies more on smart technologies, financial industry and service sector which requires less human participation that age old industry and agriculture
2.  Depleting resources; Humans entirely dependent upon natural resources such as minerals, metals, oil and arable land. Now humans don’t have the steady supply of resources to generate wealth which helps to keep and increase population

Problems

Large population consumes lot of natural resources which took thousands of years t naturally form. Production of those resources can’t keep up with the rising population.

This earth is not only designed for humans but we take the whole world for granted. The truth is humans are mere part of the world’s Eco system. Natural resources and generally the environment are used by every other plant and animal. Over-consumption and rising demand puts strain on the environment as well. This leads to environmental pollution which dangers not only humans’ future but also the whole worlds’ future.

Human standard of living was rising with the increasing population. This means people can live longer. But most of those old people don’t contribute anything to the creation of wealth; it becomes the duty of young to serve their elders from their wealth. This practice is highly appreciated in some cultures, especially in Asia but beyond this duty of safeguarding senior citizens lays a heavy burden in younger generation’s shoulders.

With the rising global population, especially in 3^rd world countries, an emigration boom is created. People are trying to migrate to rich countries in search of opportunities. Most of the Asian and North African people are trying to migrate to Western European countries and to United States. This mass migration creates disruptions between the immigrants and local people. Nowadays when people migrate to other countries they don’t embrace the local culture. They tend to communalize in their own religious or racial segments. Since western countries have lower birth rates compared to immigrants, immigrant community grows faster and creates its own sub cultures. Most of the time immigrant and local cultures don’t jell with each other well. Sudden demographic shifts are dangerous for a county’s future for example, in United Kingdom, immigration and immigrant cultures have become a big problem which has led to racial and religious conflicts more than once.  

Global population is rising in a way that the nature can’t control. Population boom may explode one day but it puts the entire humanity in jeopardy. Experts have found out that the ideal population which should be living in earth is 2 Billion. We have two solutions with us. Either find another plant to put the extra 5 Billion humans or reduce the population.

Since science is not able to find any plant suitable to us other than earth, the one and only option is population reduction. Even with that solution, we may encounter some social problems.

1.       We can’t move population to less populated countries because of cultural problems

2.       We can’t kill old people or reduce health benefits due to social and ethical issues.

3.       We can’t selectively give the chance to live for the healthiest babies like ancient Spartans did (Which sounds like a good idea) but not a single mother will like the idea of killing her baby even for the benefit of entire humanity.

We need a world-wide systematic reduction of births like the Chinese did with their one-child-policy. Like valuation and devaluation of a country’s currency, governments should have a plan specifying how many people are needed for the future to plan the birth policy. If the country can sustain more people, less restricted birth policy can be enforced. If the population is growing, strict laws regarding number of children can be brought forward. While making policy changed, the scientific community should be able to find ways to sustain large population from limited resources without affecting the environment.

We too need to change and adjust their high-end, energy-consuming lifestyles. That surely be uncomfortable since we are too comfortable with our life but if we keep on going like this, the end is painful than ever. Overpopulation is created by us. Before it consumes us and reduce humanity to rubble, we should act bravely and take drastic measures to prevent that from happening. 

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Popular Schools Phenomenon in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has one of the highest literacy rates in the world on a par with most of the developed nations. Primary and secondary education is Sri Lanka is entirely delivered by the school system which pushes the child along a race track for 13 years. School years define the future of the child. Although our country has a good literacy rate, education system is plagued with problems such as unequal distribution of educational resources, outdated study materials and many more. De-escalation of this problem is vital for our children’s future.

Among the various problems, unequal distribution of educational resources is one of the main problems. A child needs a resourceful environment for education. Ultimate goal of education is to give life skills to children to face the future world. School education should facilitate the child to get a good education and a good job for the future. School itself plays a vital role in successful education.

There are a handful of schools which we identify as popular schools. They draw the baseline for the school education in our country.  There are two kinds of popular schools; private schools and government public schools. The former were opened by western missionaries to give education to the Ceylonese according to western values and Christian religious principles. They have a rich history and the almost all of them were in Colombo except a handful in Kandy and Galle districts. The latter were government funded public schools. They can be early missionary schools or Buddhist schools established as a response to the missionary schools.

Sri Lankan parents ready for the battle of putting a child to a popular school even before the child is born. Sometimes these preparations take place even before a couple gets married. Competition is fierce for the limited number of vacancies available in the popular schools. Parents need to summon up all their persuasive powers such as money, political influence and other corrupt methods to get a foothold for their child in one of the popular schools

I’ve passed the grade five scholarship examination but lacked the marks to attend to a popular school (which I regret so much to this day) but I was lucky to have schooled in the best school in my province which was far away from the capital. I have experienced the struggle to find a popular school by my parents at first hand.

Generally popular schools have good teachers, study materials and infrastructure. Even though the government doesn’t provide much monetary support for development, the schools have extensive old pupils network and means to gain money. Plenty of opportunities for sports and extracurricular activities are available for the students. Attending a popular school is a status symbol in Sri Lanka. It can also be a family legacy as well. That’s why most of the people are using the reputation of their school to get job opportunities, to secure a beneficial marriage and to climb the social ladder.

Some not so popular schools have good teachers, study materials and infrastructure exceeding if not on a par with popular schools but are in no position to compete with them because of the lack of reputation. Sri Lankan people have an irrebuttable presumption that popular schools are good no matter how many good schools emerge. This was mainly because of the rich history and traditions associated with those popular schools which lead to prestige.

Central colleges opened by C.W.W.Kannangara for educating the masses can compete with the popular schools in quality of education and resources. As witnessed in the Advanced Level examination and various other sports festivals, education and extracurricular activates are also excellent in these schools. But the heartbreaking truth is that by being the school for the masses, they have become less preferable to the more prestigious popular schools in the capital of Sri Lanka.

Grade 5 scholarship is one of the main entry points for the popular schools. They require high marks at the exam. There are even talks to abolish the grade 5 scholarship examination altogether. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be done. Scholarship exam is the only window of opportunity for a rural child to experience the facilities in the city and to discover new opportunities. If the grade 5 scholarship exam gets abolished, the only remaining thread for a rural child to hang on for a better future will be lost.  The popular schools will only be reserved for the rich and the class gap may widen dramatically.

Popular schools are here for stay. We can’t eliminate the elevated status of the popular schools but by empowering and developing the rural schools, restoring the old glory of the central colleges and especially increasing the opportunities in popular schools for the students by upgrading their facilities to accommodate more students can be taken to diminish the negative factors of popular schools. I do believe that lobbying for the above changes in the education system should be the utmost priority of the so called ‘protectors of free education’ if they really want to preserve the right of free education.

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