Be a Maverick

An independent or rebellious person

Thursday, March 08, 2007

On Womens Day

In the past i.e. 1900’s-1980’s women were portrayed as one who does all the household works and takes good care of the husband and her children’s.

The main reason for portraying women like this was because men were considered superior to women because they earn more and majority of men compared to women were educated. Considering the situation at that time and since I was not there to witness it probably you can say that women were treated in a manner which they dint deserve.

Since earning women at that time were very low in number the tax slab for women was also higher compared to men, this move by government must be really appreciated as it encouraged young girls to follow the trend set by earning women and claim the benefits given by the government.

Now the recent Taxation policy released by our finance minister also gives more leverage to women than men, women have been given a luxurious tax slab of 1.35 lakh, while men are given a mediocre 1.10 lakh. The finance minister has followed the trend of giving benefits to the female community and we can’t completely blame him as he is the one person who is well educated and knows what he is doing, many tax reforms introduced by him are good examples to vouch this statement.

But as common people, do we agree to this different tax slabs to men and women, lets take few examples and discuss this issue.

Various women organization have been chanting for a while now for equal rights for women i.e. 50-50, if everything is to be equally divided why should the tax slab be different.

I work in a MNC and when I turn my head around in my office women are a good percentage higher than men, you have to actually long to a see a male companion to have coffee with or to have a dirt talk. The number of fresher’s out of college who are women are higher than men and more campus interviews are conducted at women’s college by major MNC companies.

Ok, lets say may be the truth is that women are more intelligent at college level and thru their smartness they get jobs easily ( I am prepared to analyze this at each and every level) , wat happens after they get married, while they are in the job, maternity leave of 3 months with paid salary. Wat they go thru for giving birth to a child is a feeling you cant express and three months is too short in my opinion so lets not dig into this issue any further.

After the child is born, when the couples go out with the child you can easily see that the child is the responsibility of the father… the father will be running behind the child to feed the child while the mother will be watching the scene with laughter. Even yesterday I saw a similar situation happen in a restaurant.

Women population as a whole is also in increasing trend, tax reforms are formed with the purpose to collect money for major government activities, if women who have easily outplayed men in the current environment are more in number and they get all the benefits how come the tax paid to the government will increase and who will be on the losing side.

March 8th is regarded as women’s day, is there any day for men…… I don’t think so….. Women give birth and they are bound to be workshiped, but here also the benefit to the women is comparatively more than men.

I am sure many of us have heard of the term “house wife” or “home maker”, I have always wondered the origin of this term and curious to know its inventor .Apparently, house wife or home maker is a term used to refer to married women who is not officially employed to get a handsome salary but in all fair terms does fair bit of work.

I am sure going at this rate in the near future there will be lot of demand for a particular job… people will be standing in big queues for this job - “house husbands”.

I am not saying that the tax slab for women must be reduced… men and women are almost treated the same in India right now and this should make the government think that both have the equal right to pay tax at a equivalent rate with a similar tax slab.

I am not against the benefits women have got all these years, I am just worried about the fact that if everything is to be treated the same (sometimes its slightly sliding towards the women’s side) the tax slab must also be the same.