Your daughter is a medical graduate now. She has a good degree in her hand. She gets a proposal.....
COVER STORY
I sit on the computer, surfing the internet. I come across this tweet. 85,000 female doctors not practicing after getting a qualification. This is because A: To secure a better marriage proposal. B: Wives are barred from working by their insecure husbands. Is it time to make them pay back the costs so that replacement doctors can be trained?
It took me six years down memory lane. I was sitting in an auditorium full of pre-medical undergraduates. 300 heads full of the thirst to seek knowledge and 600 eyes full of dreams. Each one of them sat in that hall, belonging to King Edward Medical University, intently listening to whatever the ‘Kemcolians’ (students of King Edward Medical University) had to tell them about getting into that medical school. A professor was talking on the podium. I remember his words distinctly, “Almost 60 percent of the female doctors do not practice....”
We were dumb kids. We just heard 60 percent and started clapping. The professor started shaking his head. The student standing next to him smacked his hand on his forehead. When we realised what we had done, we felt extremely embarrassed. I, as a young feminist, felt a little enraged. Why would female medical student not build a career for themselves? How silly!
Fast forward two years ... I sit in a class, all ready to take notes. I was a nerd in medical school. The professor who was supposed to teach us that day started the lecture with the same opening lines I have heard every other professor repeat, “I once sat on these benches, too. At that time, only the front row had a dozen female students. Rest of the class was boys. And now, I rarely see boys in the lecture hall. Girls are getting admission into medical school at a rate that is increasing every year. And then they waste those seats by becoming home-makers. What a pity!”
Ugh. Why do all these professors hate us female students? We shall not waste these seats. I think to myself.
Fast forward two more years. I hear the term “the doctor bride” for the first time. I see angry, enthusiast females speaking out on the internet against those who leave their jobs as doctors in order to raise a family. I remember a post saying that females should stop becoming doctors to get good proposals. I do not understand that. Why would a girl put herself through so much misery of studying because she thinks she would get a good proposal?
But then it all began. When the word gets out that I am almost a medical graduate now, proposals start pouring in. I have an elder sister whose nuptials were my parents’ first priority. But the people proposing for me did not care for that. They wanted a bride who was also a doctor. In the sub-continent culture, the families of interested boys treat the girl like an exhibit. The interested family visits. Eats all that is put in front of them. And then they inspect the lady-to-be-wed as a piece of meat. Her height, her weight, her nose shape, her complexion; everything is analyzed. The concluding decision is made on the amount of dowry she would bring in. After making my sister go through this pain-stacking process, the people would still say that they would rather have the younger one because she is going to be a doctor.
You know what my mother did to prevent this? She stopped telling people that I was in medical school. Hiding her potential doctor bride was what she had to resort to, in order to find for her elder daughter a good proposal. I felt humiliated. Unappreciated. An object which has to be hidden because it shines so bright that it burns its loved ones. I was a young girl who did not know any other way to process this.
And now we come back to this day where I read the above-mentioned tweet by a renowned Pakistani actress. I think to myself, how much does she really know about the doctor brides? Why is it even a term? Why do competent female medical students end up being housewives? And why is that such a bad thing?
Let us dissect the issue at hand.
In brown culture, everything about a daughter revolves around her proposal. From the day she is born, her mother starts thinking about her dowry. When she takes her first steps, her dad pictures her walking out of the wedding hall with her new husband. This is how I have seen it. All our television dramas and our sappy literature have one obsession, women and their marriages. Having brought up that way, the conditioning makes parents think on the same lines. They want their daughters to be doctors because that will bring pride to the family by bringing in good proposals. And if a set of parents actually want their daughter to become a doctor because that is what she wants, too, other parents or family members or neighbours or that dude on Facebook will have some opinion on it.
Your daughter is a medical graduate now. She has a good degree in her hand. She gets a proposal. You wed her in the most lavish way imaginable. The story that follows is tragic. The susral or in-laws often have too much pride to let their daughters-in-law work the night shifts at the hospitals. The hospitals in a third-world-thinking-it-is-a-developing country have no security. Anyone can shout at you, disrespect you or even assault you. Even if the husband is not “insecure” or ego-maniac, would a man really want his other half to work in an environment where there is a threat to her security 24/7? I think not.
Now let us assume the woman is too passionate to let this security issue intimidate her. Now she becomes a mother. She has a neonate at home. After consuming the laughable, meager maternity leave she gets, she has to start going back to the hospital. She has to work for more than 36 hours straight. Then she gets back home, tired and emotionally drained, where she has to take care of a baby, cook food, clean the house and do all the things that housewives are supposed to do. Because if she does not, battlefields will emerge in her household. She will have to hear things like “Kids of working moms end up being neglected and hence spoiled.” Or “I used to work, too, but I left after I had kids. There is no other choice.” And if she is a person like me, not very good at multi-tasking, she will eventually end up leaving her job for the greater good of her kids.
Read the last line again. And again. What we fail to realise is, not every woman has super human powers like we assume them to possess. Some women are not good at performing well at both their job and their home. They get tired. They can get too emotionally consumed by their jobs to cater to their family’s emotional needs. They might end up having a crappy work-life or a crappy personal one, and we all know how important it is to have balanced work and personal relationships to maintain one’s physical and mental health.
So why is it such a big deal if a doctor leaves her job for the sake of her family? Why are teachers or engineers not criticised in the same way? What I think is, firstly because females “waste” the medical school seats, apparently. Those seats could have gone to men, who would have ended up serving the humanity. I scoff while I write this. Why do we have to push back our girls so that men can have that opportunity? Why is it that the first solution that comes to our mind is giving up those seats for men? Why cannot we address the root cause and not make our girls feel like they cannot pursue their passion because they might end up not working?
Secondly, what I do not understand is, everyone seems to think the government spends a lot of money training female doctors, and that money ends up in the drain because women decide to sit at home. Well, is no money spent on training males who end up serving in foreign countries? Or who end up going into civil service? Why do we think our health care system is suffering just because of women? When will our obsession with women end?
Yes, women end up leaving their jobs as doctors. Yes, in a country with religious boundaries, we need more female doctors to cater to the need of our female patients. But the same religion that makes our women adamant on getting treated by a woman only, also asks the state to train more lady doctors and to provide better working environment for them. I heard a senior male orthopedic surgeon saying once, “Females do come into this field. But they do not last long. They say they cannot perform night duties. They ask for favours in that regard. If they want to compete with us, they will have to work like us. Continuously and tirelessly.” Well, sir, I completely agree. You must not give someone an added benefit because of their gender. The duty hours must be equal for all. But how about building a day-care for her kids? How about providing her with a safe space where she can breastfeed her baby and not be ogled or judged? How about doing your part in building a society where the lady doctors can work all night without the fear of the very inevitable feud with her husband that is going to happen the following morning? How about not forcing them to go into basic sciences so that it becomes “easier” for them to have a family life? A professor from the basic sciences beamed when I told her I like basic sciences and said, “Oh they are the best. You have fixed timings. You have your weekends. Your husband is happy. And your kids do not end up being morons.” It is lucky that I have a passion for the basic sciences then, I thought. And I instantly felt empathy for those who want to be surgeons and physicians but their families do not approve of that lifestyle.
To conclude, I can say this on the behalf of all my female colleagues, we are willing to pay the cost spent on training us. If, in return, it means we shall have the freedom to pursue what we want. Without the external pressures. I will give you the money, if you let me perform surgical interventions on patients or burp my baby to sleep, in peace, without your condescending, judgmental remarks.
