Well here's a use for college

Mubai paper Mid-Day has a story about the wedding that is going to take place between former Pakistani cricket captain Javed Miandad's son, Junaid Miandad, and current Indian Most Wanted Terrorist Dawood Ibrahim's daughter, Mahrukh.

So much for quashing rumors of the underworld-cricketworld nexus. That isn't what's bothering me though. The story says that the two fell in love, so more power to them. What gets my goat is this line at the end of the story:

Mahrukh is doing a management course in Oxford. She has been in England for the last two years. They fell in love and both the families agreed to their wedding. It is learnt that Mahrukh is not keen to pursue a career after the nikah and will be a housewife.

The girl is doing a management course at one of the most prestigious universities in the world and she decides to give up a promising career to become a housewife?

It seems possible that one reason for this would be the prevalent chauvanistic attitudes that say the man goes out and does the hunting while the woman tends the fire in the cave....blah blah. If so then it is a terrible pity that a girl who has gotten a chance to attend Oxford University and who has been exposed to the tremendous strides that women have made in the world caves in to misguided traditionalism. But I guess I ought to cut her some slack. Her dad's not exactly a pussycat.

Or did she do to college just to get a degree to make herself more marriageable? Granted, the daughter of a don isn't the best example but it is symptomatic of the closed thinking that still prevails. College is an investment in your future that is paid back by putting to good use the education that you have received. That doesn't always equate to money. Social change can be wrought by the education that you have received....and so on. However it seems that a degree for a girl sometimes just serves to get her a better husband. Society does not get the benefit of the investment that it has made in her. If she were to spend the rest of her life as a housewife and busy herself in cooking meals and ferrying her children to and fro from tuition classes, she would have done women a tremendous injustice. For long it has been argued that the lack of opportunites and exposure have led to women being kept down. Seems a waste then, that a woman who has had the chance to go to one of the most prestigious universities in the world spurns the chance to advance womenkind.

I can see how this argument could be interpreted to mean that only non-college educated women should become housewives. Hardly. I just feel that you should put to good use the 4-5 years of your life that you spent studying and learning about the world. Whether this comes about by getting involved in your commmunity, social work or by raising children with a broadminded and liberated view of the world is upto the person in question.

A university degree should not be a marriage certificate.