Women : Our crown jewels

As a man I am finding this to say this and the views might not be accepted by some ; but let me say this with the usual disclaimer - women are perhaps the crown jewels of Oasis, the organization I work for , its conscience keepers and its soul. To be sure, there are lots of good men here too, but embedded at various levels in the organization- capably, articulately and very eminently running several key functions in Oasis, without whom the organization would collapse, and even I would be handicapped , are some very gifted and talented women.

And this post is a recognition of that. It is not tha twe men dont need attention and affirmation. We do. But men do often get a lot of attention and are even vain glorious attention seekers. Women, on the other hand- and I am talking about the ones I meet at Oasis anyway, are quietly going about the work that we are all about - about restoring broken lives and seting them on the path to wholeness. inthe last 16 years that Oasis has been at work in India, several lives have been touched and transformed and repaired. and although we may not have clean cut research to prove it, women have been pivotal to this. And some ofthose women were around yesterday, are around today and I ask God that they are around tomorrow too. I say this with unbelievable appreciation for their work and perhaps for the work of all women who work in organizations with the ethos that Oasis has - where the efforts required are immense, the results are uncertain and the monetary rewards at least aren't great. And yet they go on.

I come from a generation where the men went to work, worked hard and passionately even perhaps, but once they came back from work , they sat down to chill with the daily paper or the television, or what have you, and perhaps did some work too , if there was a pressing deadline at the office. In any case that generation did (and do) pretty little at home. I know that times change, and it is a different generation that you might see out there at the workplace. But again, because the very nature of my work keeps me informed about how society is or is not changing, I am aware that not too much is changing. And so women still work a lot harder than men in most cases; at home and at work- and if they are lucky , they can expect to be affirmed and honored at one of these places; but if they have hit a bad patch of soil, they can toil tirelessly at both places without any recognition or reward anywhere. and so, if my colleagues represent any thing of mainstream Indian society, they too would be working hard at their multiple responsibilities.

I began this article well, but am fumbling to finish it, because it involves talking about and admitting to one's own frailties and foibles. Talking about working women in general including my own wife and my own colleagues in Oasis as our crown jewels is one thing, but to value them that way is another. Do I do that ? Well, this article is not a hypocritical ode; it is real and written straightfrom the heart and I can picture many of them, right now as I type out these words, and I certainly value them and as I said before, without the assistance of some of them, I would be personally crippled ; leave alone the organization. At home, without the immense burden that my own wife, a busy working woman carries, I would not just be crippled but paralyzed. But I am not sure that my speech or action reveals any of that respect to these women unless any one of them has a particularly high level of discerenment.

But let me not end this piece by self flagellating myself. I am here today and will one day be gone. And while I may need to see what I can do to shape up my own speech and conduct,these crown jewels are an institutional resource - each one of them a blessing from God that needs to be valued and then that respect needs to be conveyed. How do we do that ? Rewards and promotions and all these accsesories that come readily to mind and all these are important, but these are good outward indicators of some thing else. Perhaps, it is an inner reverence that we need to cultivate, that will then play itself out in many different ways.