By: Areeba Tayyab
Marianne Williamson in her book A Woman’s Worth writes: “Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved”. In the lightning fast world of 21st century, it is essential to understand the working atmosphere and professional hierarchy of an organization. With the increased pressure of finances in our country and maintaining a good standard at work place as well, working women tend to get themselves in trouble always.
It is true that we being mothers, daughters, sisters and wives have certain tendency to ease things up for the people we love but that in returns damages a lot of things for us
We are unable to get the ‘weisure’ we require because of the increased working hours and hence depression is increasing amongst working female because either way their job or their family suffers. Considering this situation, one must consider what Stephen Covey mentioned in his book “7 Habits of highly effective people” as circle of concern and circle of influence. The circle of concern must have all the aspect that concern you or effect you in any way. The circle of influence; however, deals with the aspects that you can actually influence by your actions. Unfortunately, we, the working women tend to consider all the problems of the world as our own and take unnecessary pressure about thinking what may happen. This is not the right attitude.
On the other hand, sharing burden is a new trend in our country, but females tend not to share but have all the burden to themselves. It is true that we being mothers, daughters, sisters and wives have certain tendency to ease things up for the people we love but that in returns damages a lot of things for us. There are instances seen where working women are sharing the financial burden of the family and also taking kids to shopping as well as picking and dropping them at school. This situation becomes completely unfair. It is as if you are giving your partner the opportunity to handover all the responsibilities to you. In case of single female women, they tend to over burden themselves by sharing the financial burden of their families and also deal with the pressure of saving money for their own dowries.
Sharing burden is ones family is one aspect, the problem shapes into a nightmare when we start taking problems of others as our own. This tendency again arises in females because of their motherly nature as we tend to solve problem of all the other men and women around us. This is very frustrating because one cannot satisfy everyone. In this regard, again the circle of concern and circle of influence should be highlighted. For the working women, it is extremely important to work and just work because she has a family to work for later that day. If women start interfering in other people’s business then they will suffer twice as much at their work places.
In a still conservative society of Pakistan, the character assignation is a very obvious phenomenon. A vast majority of females tend to leave their jobs or resign because how others at workplace conceive them. Suddenly, others opinion about you matter more than your own opinion about yourself. Even though your colleagues will tell you that is not true about you, you will believe in the negative circle created around you. Ladies, these negative thoughts again should not be your circle of concern, because this again would damage you and your profession.
It is time we must understand that in spite of emotional nature we try to manage things logically. We should try emotional intelligence in this regard and definitely get the best results. There are instances of logical women in the world who have out-shined their male competitors and maintained their families as well. Stay in your circles, stay in your concerns.
The writer is Mphil in English Literature and author of The Bloody Muse. She can be reached at [email protected]