EVE-olution

The following article is ‘borrowed’ from a magazine called M@d@m Ch@ir. I was pleasantly surprised to read it for two reasons: firstly, most of the survey results echoes what I personally feels (so it’s not just me!) and secondly, the article seems to be out-of-place considering the magazine is clearly targeted for high-flying career women.

[A study on gender futures by xxx, a global consumer trend-watching network, seems to indicate, among other things, that there will be a growing number of women who would prefer to stay at home and become homemakers rather than go out to work. “Today’s Malaysian women have been spending the last decade re-modelling themselves into no-nonsense, hard-as-nails ‘superwomen’ who are eager to match men stride for stride, but signs are now pointing to the imminent return of femininity, a sense of belonging within the home and family,” says yyy, strategic planning director of xxx.

This eve-olution report is based on signs gathered from Malaysia and beyond – ranging from new emerging business models to demographic trends to xxx’s own survey of the hopes, dreams, and fears of 100 career women between 25 and 35 and earning about RM5000.

The survey shows that:

• Female degree/diploma holders opting to be housewives instead of career women increased by 45% over the past six years.
  
• 74% of Malaysian women would rather have natural womanly curves rather than looking like waif-like thin models.
  
• 73% of career women believe that husbands should earn more than their wives in order to support them financially.
  
• One in three career women see devotion to their career as a ‘selfish’ act.
  
• Women are no longer shy nor coy about love; 66% of Malaysian women say their life would be incomplete if they didn’t find a man to love them.
  
• More women professionals are turning to modern versions of traditional matchmakers – and see no harm in joining speed-dating and lunch-dating services.
  
• 52% of working women often fantasize about getting married, becoming tai-tai and leaving the corporate world.
  
• 83% consider downshifting their current position to have more time. Slow hobbies are making a comeback, with 1 in 4 young women having taken up knitting or knowing someone who has.
  
• Housework is no longer taken as a chore; 78% now choose to cook not because they need to but because they want to.
  
• 38% of women report that they are buying more home and living magazines than before. This trend’s also reflected in the increase in tracked readership of such magazines over the past six years.

Women of today: Career-oriented, fiercely independent superwoman. Defines success in much the same way a man would.
Women of tomorrow: No longer believes in defining success in masculine terms. Is completely at peace with being a ‘full-time nurturer, part-time everything else’.

1 eve-minity: femininity fights back.
2 eve-munity: from me, me, me to dependency on others
3 eveR after: from girl power to love culture
4 eve-exits: from rat race to slowing down]

No, I didn’t buy the magazine; it was a door gift in an event I attended a couple of weeks back: Women's Summit. Among the few observations I had made during the event, one interesting one is to do with the toilet. Since women made up a huge majority of the event participants and the event quite big to begin with, a logistics issue arose during break time, when hundreds of women crowded to use the toilets. The venue authority decided to let the men’s toilet be used by the women as well. But later, a group of men uncomfortably waited for their turn while an attendant (politely, of course) ‘shoo-ed’ the women away. We haven’t seen this yet, but I hope this won’t turn into an little analogy of real life issues when women would dominate men’s territories so much so that a facilitator is needed to keep the balance. Hmm, highly unlikely anyway.