Can the financial independence of working women help them sail through the distress period when their husbands die? They also need support, care, love, and togetherness, which is often missing, as Hemashri laments. This is an exclusive for Different Truths. 

These days, I often ask myself, ‘Am I really an empowered woman?’ Really? How am I better off than my predecessors? 

Just because we work, is it all ‘sugar and spice, everything lovely’? I, too, believed that our generation of women, with education and financial independence, are far better off than their mothers and grandmothers. 

When life exploded with sudden eventualities, my belief system collapsed. 

Battling with Grief 

After my husband’s death, when I battled with grief, trauma, and emptiness, my best support was medications. Everyone seemed so confident that I could manage everything on my own because I am an educated, working woman. Thankfully, perhaps many like me are managing it well. 

Two years into this new phase of life, I am now. Looking back, I feel proud yet sad. 

Happiness research at Harvard, which followed alumni for eighty years, found that human happiness depends profoundly on relationships. I have been wondering what I have done all these years and why I have not been able to build meaningful relationships. What is wrong with me? 

Talking to fellow womenfolk made me realise I was not alone. Even they faced similar plights. Many friends and relatives, they said, vanished after a sudden disaster of losing their husbands. Like moths drawn to light, it is human nature for people to be attracted only to normal, happy homes. 

Modern-day Lives 

Modern-day busy lives leave no time for anyone, even in close circles, to spend time together. Maybe they all assume that an educated working woman can do everything on her own and manage everything by herself. These women take it as a challenge to prove they are strong, smart ladies. They keep trying to live that illusion. Many end up with anxiety, panic, depression disorders or other health issues. Statistics say health issues are rampant among working women. 

In the past, their counterparts received generous support because those women were not earning members. Maybe there used to be big joint family systems that doubled as their safety net. Today, the nuclear family is the norm. The women, suddenly alone, must fend for themselves. They discover that their many fair-weather friends have vanished.

Thus, a working woman may have the freedom to wear what she wants or eat what she longs to eat. But is she better off than her predecessors? It’s not a simple question to answer. To obtain the right answers, perhaps first we shall have to frame the right questions:

Is she happier?

Is she feeling more secure?

Is she having better health than her ancestors?

Does she have better choices? 

Happiness cannot be just a few more fancy clothes or access to pizza or burgers. 

Ingrained Value System 

Women do consider it. You are caught between a deeply ingrained Indian value system and a ruthlessly modern work culture. And to make it worse, there may not be much support around. 

Do you think that at your age, your mom or grandma was better off than you? 

I am thinking this way for the sake of enlightened self-interest. My appeal to you all: it is time you also think. Financial independence is very important, but our well-being includes sound health, love, care, and happiness. 

We must demystify the real face of empowerment. Moreover, survival strategy demands that we keep working on being everything for ourselves.

Visual by Different Truths

Hemashri Hazarika

Hemashri Hazarika is an Officer of the Assam Civil Service since 1997. Her research on Assam Civil Service brought reforms in 2015. A first-class Postgraduate in Economics from Gauhati University, she was awarded JRF/NET by UGC in 1997. Her experience as a bureaucrat has sensitised her to human sufferings. A solutionist by passion, she takes an active interest in issues related to Governance, Development, Women, Children, etc. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Painting are her hobbies.