Question: Are women beginning to compete with vital power too, now that they are trying to compete with men?

Sri Chinmoy: Now they are beginning. Let us hope that they will be satisfied with what they get. The other person’s possession is very beautiful before you get it; but when you get it, it is often not so beautiful. Women will get the kind of liberation they want. But when they are given full opportunity to do anything that they want, they will neglect quite a few things. They will only want to do what men are now doing. Then there will be a "wonderful" time between husband and wife, between man and woman. When the wife does the same thing as the husband, they will both go to work at the same time and the house will go to perfect hell. At night, when both of them come home tired, exhausted, dead, the wife will say, “You do half the work, and I will do the other half.” Then it may happen that one of them will be sick or unwilling to do his part. There will be hundreds of ways that they will run into conflict.

In Indian villages, husbands do not allow their wives to go to work. The reason they give is that it is beneath their dignity to send their wives to work. But others will think, “He doesn’t want his wife to come in contact with men at an office. He is afraid that he will lose his wife.” Now, when the women get the liberation that they are crying for, because of social pressure the husbands will say, “All right. Go and work.” We can say that they are making a sacrifice or that they are taking a risk, because we do not know how much control these women will have over their lives when they have to face the outside world. But when they do face the outside world, these women have to be very brave. They have to be in the world but not be affected by it. They will face temptation. If they are weak, they will be ruined. If they are strong, they will not be ruined.

In any field one wants to enter, there should be an understanding. If women challenge men too much, it will be like jumping into the fire; they will be totally lost. Even if they make the same contribution, they will realise that they have neglected many important things. Women have to draw a line somewhere. They should not compete with men just for the sake of competition. If they do, they will only create more problems for themselves. Suppose the wife runs a restaurant and the husband plays music. If the wife decides to compete with her husband in music, she will neglect her own work. She will say, “Let me go and practise the guitar.” Then, when her restaurant totally fails, who will feel the loss?

If there are two kinds of work, should we not give the same importance to both? Unfortunately, this is not done. That is the trouble. If a woman feels that her work, even if it is only cleaning the house, is less important than her husband’s work, then definitely that is a misconception of truth. Women have, unfortunately, made themselves feel that their work is inferior to men’s work. But this is not true. Take, for example, this yard where we are relaxing now. The husband has done all the heavy work, but without the wife’s effort it would not be so beautiful. The husband may receive all the appreciation when the wife is not here, but the fact remains that she has done much of the work. So many times people are not appreciated the way they want to be appreciated. But where does appreciation go? It goes to the Source. So the real Doer always gets all the appreciation. The real Doer is God. When we appreciate someone, even if we do not outwardly appreciate him, our appreciation goes to God.

So, I wish to tell all my women disciples that freedom is something they want and need in many ways. But there are a few fields where, if they want to compete with men, they will only create problems. Again, there are some fields where it is not good for men to compete with them. There are many, many fields that each one can enter.