Prestigious Honour For Hindi Department

"Dr. P.K. Jayalakshmi, Head of Hindi Department of St. Joseph’s College for Women has been appointed as Visiting Professor at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India for two academic years. She has been a teacher for the past 23 years and has published six books and delivered many lectures on her subject." - The Hindu 10.12.12

All the Josephines join in congratulating her and wishing her all the best! May God bless her with success and bring more laurels to her, the College and the Nation!

Are Modern Woman as Much a Slave as were Her Predecessors ?

Recently the engagement of a close friend’s son was broken much to our surprise since the couple seemed to be well matched – both being software engineers and educated in the same type of social milieu. It emerged that the boy had objected to his fiancé going out with her friends (male) to the beach and told her that she should go out only with her family members or girl friends. The bride was offended and called off the wedding in spite of protests by her family members. This piquant situation raised as expected many eyebrows but it also threw up several questions.
Why did the boy – ostensibly a modern one - react in such an archaic fashion?
Was the girl too hasty in her reaction? How is it that similar backgrounds resulted in such dissimilar thinking in the boy and the girl? And so on…
What was very interesting to me is that most of the older people (both friends and relatives) and not so old also supported the boy and found fault with the girl.
It appears to me that all the freedom that we desire for our women is only a superficial one. Educationally we want them to reach the heights; professionally we want them to break the glass ceilings (while ensuring that they do not surpass their husbands); economically they should contribute significantly to the family kitty.  So far so good but………… no further! Socially and at personal levels they should be self-effacing and emotionally mature enough only to say to her partner, “Yes your Royal Highness! Your will is my first command”. 

There can be no doubt that the modern woman is as much a slave to the modern man as were her predecessors. What Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar said in the 19^th century holds good even now in the 21st century, two hundred years later.
   “I am quite aware that we still retain something of the old idea that the mother must be looked upon as a goddess by her children…… But every woman is a wife before she is a mother; and the position of the wife, with us, is that of a petted slave-more slave than pet; she must not even speak to strangers; in the North she is not supposed to see men, except the prescribed ones…..The root evil is the idea that has almost become instinctive among our men-folk that a woman enlightened and liberated who can face the world boldly and treat all as her equals cannot remain chaste.”  



I do not blame the boy who behaved as he did – he is only a victim of the social system that perpetuates the inequality between men and women. This mind set is also responsible for the increase in the incidence of rapes in various parts of our country. As long as women continue to be treated as commodities and possessions of men to glorify their status, the dreams of reformers like Gurjada Apparao, Raja Ramamohan Roy and others will only be on paper to be used to pat ourselves about the empowerment of women while in reality women continue to be slaves to the whims of a man and his relatives.  

PS - I do not deny the existence of Supportive husbands but they constitute a very small minority and do deserve the appreciation and salute of the women folk.

Tamarind Canopy at Crossroads

Having been away from the St. Joseph's College campus for more than two years after my superannuation, I am wondering what direction this blog should take. It is difficult for me to maintain contact with the latest developments of  the college and report on it. Nor do I want to move away from the original objective of using this blog as a connecting/meeting point for Josephines to interact, reminisce, share whatever is happening in their lives,  help their juniors by sharing their experiences in professional and personal life, ask questions for which answers are not readily available in spite of the World Wide Web and so on. I will use it to record random thoughts, ideas and suggestions of purely academic nature but hope the Josephines will contribute through the comments column of this blog to give a direction to this blog so that its original objective is achieved and i ma also kept busy trying to help the younger generation in whatever way I can.

Homescience - Need for a New Approach

What is Homescience? It is a multifaceted discipline comprising human development, Foods, Nutrition and Dietetics, Textiles and Clothing, Family Resource Management and Extension Education as well as subjects in related areas like physiology, biochemistry, sociology and others - all of which contribute towards enhancing the quality of life by optimizing the use of basic resources namely food, clothing and shelter. Though homemaking may be an ancient skill that may be imbibed by word of mouth, the increasing pressures of industrialization, urbanization and globalisation have disrupted the social fabric of family life thus affecting experiential learning of homemaking as in the past. With the breakup of the joint family system and dispersal of nuclear families, the traditional family life is slowly disappearing as is familial interactions with consequent learning experiences.  The discipline of Homescience therefore assumes greater importance during the 21^st century since it helps individuals and families to develop a sound philosophy with sustaining values.

Unfortunately in the public mind the stigma of “cooking and stitching” could not be removed and that is partly responsible for the decreasing admission into the Homescience faculty. It is this stigma, which makes the society, look at it with suspicion as a bid to use domesticity as a shackle on women’s opportunities. Many feminists denigrated this course and targeted it as an attempt to keep the women in the kitchen. Although dissenters have described Homescience as a “female ghetto”, the concerns of the homescientists were never confined to the home. They were always in the forefront of any community development program like the Tamilnadu Noon Meal Program, AP DWCRA movement and others.

At present there is a great and increasing need for Home scientists not only in the employment market but also in the area of self-employment since the young professionals from other fields are increasingly drawn into career concerns with little time for homemaking and family related activities.  Some of the areas in which home scientists can help by providing service and support include –

Ø      Development of new strategies to face the challenges of homemaking in the 21^st century.

Ø      Extension of these strategies to women and men struggling between the pressures of career and home in order to reduce their stress.

Ø      Care of the daily routine of running a home through agencies providing housekeeping assistance

Ø      Care of children either through counseling, setting up and running care centers for children of different age groups

Ø      Care of old, sick and other vulnerable groups

Ø      Dietary counseling and management of nutrition requirements of healthy and unwell people.

Ø      Guide educational and social development of children and others in the family.

Intervention in all the areas mentioned above and more can easily be accomplished by the Homescience graduates can step in and provide goods and services while in the process providing employment to others.

Strategies for Popularizing Home science:

Ø      Increase awareness about the course among the public

Ø      Offer the course in modules as Nutrition, Textile Designing and so on.

Ø      Provide expertise for starting entrepreneurial ventures.

Family is the unit of a society and if it is neglected in the rat race for materialism society will be decimated. It is only the faculty of Homescience, which can protect and preserve the harmony and happiness of the family.