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| (5) Myanmar women and careers in the 1930s
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| It is surprising that
there should be prejudice against women taking office jobs when most of the
retail shops have always been run by women. Perhaps keeping shop and petty
trade had long been regarded as "women's work", but to have women at the office
desk was something different or alien.
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| Even then a new
generation ofwhite collar women was rising. One of the first jobs to be
accepted as suitable and proper was teaching. A popular dog-gerel of those days
runs:
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| Don't ever a school marm
adore.
Nor with finger tickle your sore,
If ever a school marm you adore,
Hen-pecked you will ever be,
And If with finger you tickle the sore,
Poison and infection will pursue thee!
That meant school marms were not regarded as good bargains in the marriage
market. It was still important that women should sell in the matrimonial fair.
Families were therefore shame-faced and apologetic about having a working girl
in the family. "You know it's a pity to let her education go waste..."
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| Every attempt had to be
made to wipe away the impression that any girl had to help out with the family
finances. "It is only for a while before she decides to get married-you know;
there have been so many offers"... It was still how many offers of marriage a
girl had that gave her prestige, not her achievements in school or at her
career.
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| The idea of a married
woman keeping her job was preposterous. It would damage her husband's image.
Even though there might be perfectly good reasons for a married woman holding
on to her job,-like having to support a widowed mother with young children...
such reasons were not recognized. It was the snobbery of the 'general class'
and it was considered even more humiliating having to depend on "a woman's
earnings".
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| Since a married woman had
to be explained away with excuses and apologies, she earned herself an
unflatering image of "a woman who does not wish to stay at home". The husband
of such a one often cut a sorry figure, the one who never had a square meal,
whose buttons were never sewed on et cetera, et cetera. It was one of those
situations where people were generous with epithets like "never".
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| Such attitude often gave
a sensitive woman a queen size guilt complex. She had to try extra hard to be a
good wife "as good as anyone who stays at home", because whatever contribution
she might make towards the family budget did not count as anything womanwise,
or in the womanly way.
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| At work, a married woman,
therefore, was often regarded as a liability; since she was too overburdened
with household cares. She was usually dead beat when she reached the office
desk; for one thing shehad to live up to the tradition that men must be waited
on hand and foot, and that women must always be a men's beck and call. The
brain-washing of her grow- ing years was not without effect after all.
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| Women taking jobs were
not taken seriously just a stop-gap while looking for a suitable husband. Hence
departmental heads would rather appoint men than women; and they could hardly
be blamed for that attitude, for it was only too true that many women left
their jobs after marriage.
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| Women in the department
created problems, they said. Single ones were not dedicated, because they had
their eyes on eligible men who would take them away from their desks. Having
married women meant upset schedule every now and then because of maternity
leave absences... that is not counting the casual ones because of other
domestic demands.
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| At the same time economic
pressures were at work. It was not always possible for a family to live on one
person's earnings and more women entered offices as clerks and secretaries.
Some took advantage of the professional courses at the university, like
medicine in the first instance, and law at a much later decade.
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| Then came political
unrest, agitation against the colonial rule. Public media went on with
exhortations to women to come forward. If women had so far got but a grudging
tolerance in careers, they found themselves a potential force in political
organizations. More horizons were opened out for women. Here again they came up
against the old enemy - male chauvinism. This will be the subject of my next
article.
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