Dubai: Author and broadcast journalist Jenni Murray came straight to the point. Women still do 80 per cent of the household chores, she said citing a recent study.
Murray was participating in a female-centric discussion held at the seventh Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. The session titled Women in Wonderland was held at the InterContinental at Dubai Festival City.
The discussion sought to throw light on whether a wonderland for women indeed exists. Murray illustrated the idea by describing how things were during her parents’ time. Her stay-at-home mother was the perfect foil for her father, an engineer, she said.
“I told my mom, why don’t you find a job? And she said, I can’t do that; people will think dad can’t afford to keep us,” Murray said giggling at the thought.
She said she subsequently asked her dad one evening why he never washed the dishes.
The incident came to her mind, she said, because though women do most of the household chores, it should be a shared responsibility.
“When asked to do the chores, you’re not helping love, you’re doing your bit,” she said.
Adele Parks, the author of 14 bestselling novels, also spoke about her father and the struggle she faced to get her say on the major she had always wanted to pursue.
“It was a full scholarship if I was prepared to study engineering and it was a 15 per cent or maybe a 20 per cent scholarship if I wanted to study the arts, and so my fight was to say, no, I am studying the arts,” she said.
Her father, Parks recalled, could not comprehend her passion for literature and writing, and took it for a sheer waste of time. Parks shared with the audience how she spent much of her time in university in the library reading and writing, with little time spent with friends.
“The hard work really pays off,” she said.
Saira Shah, a reporter and documentary filmmaker, also recalled the hard work she put in to establish herself in the professional world. As a shy child, Saira said she found it hard to speak up.
“I was bullied but couldn’t tell on the kids, so I know that feeling of not having a voice,” she said. “I remember, however, in my adolescence I told myself — I am not pretty enough to find boys so I need to speak!”
Joking about the matter, Saira said she hit upon a career in journalism as she started speaking to people in an effort to shed her timidity. When someone is left with no choices, the realisation comes that there is every choice, she added.
“I crossed the borders into Afghanistan with a group of long bearded Mujahideen,” she said. “I approached my fear in a different way, I went through with it and it gave me confidence.”
She expressed the view that if women chose to live in a total wonderland, it could prevent them from facing and overcoming obstacles. “Because obstacles make you who you are,” she said.
Parks concurred with Saira on this point. She said obstacles could help people evolve and grow to be individuals they aspired to be in the future.
— Maria Botros is a trainee at Gulf News.
