Gender Equity: Part 1

March 8, 2026 

Zoom Meeting 

On the occasion of  women’s month ( March) and International Women’s Day I was invited to speak in our weekly Sunday spiritual class via zoom. 

This is the first part of that talk. The previous post with a large portion of what’s in this article has been deleted. Consider this as a revised version of the same post. There are some additions and omissions. This post also includes some discussions that occurred at the end of my presentation. 

Part 2 of this talk will be presented next Sunday. I will share that later on this blog soon thereafter.

Gender Equity !

Personal Anecdotes from a woman of today

 

Part 1

I will start today with a prayer to the feminine energy of divinity:

sarvamaṅgalamāṅgalyē śivē sarvārthasādhikē |
śaraṇyē tryambakē gauri nārāyaṇi namō:’stu tē || 

🙏🏼🙏🏼

Beginning last Sunday we kicked off Women’s Month. Today’s day that is celebrated as international women’s day. On this occasion I will be sharing anecdotes from the past six decades of my life in the form of a time capsule. I speak as a present day woman coming from the Hindu tradition. The chance to gather experiences on the ground in both eastern and western cultures as also in rural and urban areas is one of the big advantages I had. 

As I sat to prepare for this talk I realized that there are many important things to share on this subject. Rather than rush through it all in one day it seems better to break it down into 2 or 3 parts.

To begin with, perhaps a brief background about me will help you put things into perspective. 

The first 25 years of my life were spent in India and the rest 35 in the USA. I grew up in a small town near Mumbai. Both my parents were doctors. I was 15 when I was sent to Mumbai after 10th grade of highschool for further education. 2 years later I was accepted into the medical program at the topmost medical college in Mumbai. 5 years later I had the MBBS degree( equivalent of MD in the USA) and started my residency in Internal Medicine at the same institution. 

As per typical Indian practice I had an arranged marriage. The practice had undergone a few modifications by my time compared to a few generations before me. The woman’s preferences and consent were taken into account when proceeding with talks and decisions.

My husband Abhay was already into residency in Chicago at the time. I quit my residency to join him and had to work on the required exams before applying for residency programs in the new country. In the intervening years before all my paperwork was completed I had 2 kids. My older one was 2 and half years old and younger one was 6 months old when I started my residency in Internal Medicine in Los Angeles. Alongside, Abhay completed his fellowship in hematology oncology in Los Angeles. While I was halfway into my residency,he found a job and moved to Bakersfield which is a small city with a population less than half a million, situated in the midst of farming land and oilfields, about 2 hours drive north of Los Angeles. 9 months later after I got done with my residency in Los Angeles I joined him there. Our careers were solely under the roof of Kaiser Permanente in Bakersfield. We are both retired now. Our kids are adults and both physicians. Our daughter works in San Francisco as an endocrinologist. Our son is completing his residency in Head and Neck Surgery in Los Angeles. He got married last year. His wife is a doctor of pharmacy and works at a consulting firm. She is trained in Indian classical dance and is part of an active dance troupe that performs all around the country. My mother is 87 and lives with me. My sister who is younger to me lives in Dallas. She has been actively involved in oncology research with several important papers to her credit and also has her own clinical oncology practice. She is a regular participant in this group since a couple of years. My parents seemed to have saved their brightest genes for her. Talk about life being unfair. 

A few years back I took a sabbatical and spent time in India to promote Preventive Medicine as well as Palliative And Hospice Medicine, both of which I found are painfully lacking in India. I collaborated with Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital in Pune to establish their department of Preventive Medicine in 2023. I also partnered with Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai offering them our parental property rent free for their rural arm to provide Preventive Care in the town where I grew up. 

During the course of my stay for the sabbatical work I had the opportunity to observe the changes that have occurred in the 35 years since I have been away. I hope my story will help you see how things have come along and identify what is still missing that could make the situation better in years to come. At the end of the talk I will invite your ideas on any specific suggestions to bring a change. 

In the bigger scheme of things my life is both ordinary yet privileged compared to many women on many levels. 60 years feels a decent amount of time to accumulate personal lessons and an understanding of what it takes to be a woman. It is also sufficient time to observe and learn from a great number of women around oneself. Several from close quarters and many others from variable distances. Some from tales passed down through people who had known them.

Broadly let’s see my life from 3 time zones. 

First one from birth to age 25 , that is before I was married. 

We can surely cover this part today. 

The next chapter which is from age 25 to fifty, contains the larger part of my married life and career. I will cover this in more details in the next talk. 

Then the last decade, from age 50 to 60, besides seeing some diversification of career related interests, also allowed more time for spiritual exploration. Pursuit of spiritual freedom is an important aspect of a woman’s journey. I would like to tell you about the lives of some extraordinary women saints from Maharashtra from several centuries ago. In that talk we will try to find the relevance of their achievements to our modern living. 

I have seen 4 generations of women in my family since my birth and until my daughter became an adult. When I was born, both my grandmothers were already widowed. Both were uneducated and never worked outside of home. Women in those times were married at a very early age, even before they reached puberty. Their husbands were much older and as a result many women were still very young when they were widowed. Of my grandmothers, one lived in a big city and the other in a village. Under the surface, their lives were not much different from each other.

In the next generation, a greater number of women went to school and found jobs. My mother was one of the few in the family who got a medical degree. By the time I was born, college education for women was no longer considered optional . We were expected to get a degree. My father in particular groomed me and my sister to pursue medical profession with the consideration that it was one that guaranteed the most independence to women. A doctor could have her own practice in India at the time like my mother did and not have to work for someone. That was his thought. 

My father was one of those few men who understood that women deserved independence and equal status. In our home my father cooked the meals while mom was busy 24/7 with her private obstetrics practice. This was not the case in most other homes I knew. In my mother’s sisters’ homes, that is my maternal aunts’ homes, the women woke up in the wee hours of the morning to cook breakfast and lunch for the family before heading to work, then returned in the evening, stopping on the way for groceries to cook dinner. I never saw the men set the table or clean up after meals. Dishes and laundry were the sole responsibility of the woman, irrespective of whether she had a job outside of home. Unless of course the family could afford to hire someone for the cleaning duties. You can take a guess who filled in when the maids were out. Helping the kids with their homework and packing and unpacking their lunch and school bags was also the woman’s responsibility. The men had the luxury to enter the kitchen when tea was ready in the morning, read the newspaper as they sipped tea, pick the packed lunch as they headed to work, sit on the couch and turn on the TV when they returned home, leave the couch only when dinner was on the table, then watch TV again before retiring for the night. I never saw any guilt in the men’s eyes nor heard grumbles out of the women’s mouths. They had each accepted the lifestyle as it was. Tiredness was however written only on the faces of the women.

The education and employment brought some degree of confidence and financial stability to that generation of women but in return they worked harder than their uneducated, and unemployed counterparts. They essentially had two bosses, one at home and one at work. If you include the mother in law, that meant two bosses at home.

As a teenager sent to study in Mumbai I got a taste of what most middle class young girls and women go through in the city. It makes me uncomfortable to recall and tell you certain things. I have endured creepy men touching and feeling the body in crowded trains and buses. I have walked past boys Eve teasing on isolated streets. I learned to keep a vigilant eye and dodge men stalking me as I walked from the train station to my home. I could recognize intents of middle aged men visiting the home under the pretext of meeting our father when only me and my sister were home, sitting there shamelessly for hours even after being informed that our father was not going to be home that day. The luxury of feeling protected was left behind in my home town when I was 15. Self protection became a necessary skill to acquire and it was acquired by automaticity and instinct. No thinking or preparation went into it at that age. Perhaps the protected life I had enjoyed earlier had a lot to do with the confidence I gathered when my safety was threatened. Not all women can bank on such confidence when it is most needed. When I think about it, what I am telling you at the age of 60, I never mentioned any of this ever to my father. Not sure if it was because of a gender gap, generational gap or cultural thing or all of the above. Predatory behaviors of various degrees and under various circumstances have been quietly familiar to women like me decades before men like Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein were exposed. These truths never seem to meet the standards of etiquette for an open discussion in the living room.. 

Dr Sane talked about how trends changed with time regarding the age of marriage for women. My father’s eldest sister was married when she was just 8 or 9 years old. By the time my father was born she already had three children of her own. Dr Sane knew her well. Her third child is none other than Dr Sane himself. When it came to my generation the trend to get college education pushed the age of marriage considerably down. Early twenties was considered a good age for girls to get married. Today education is even more extended. Our daughter, with specialization in endocrinology is 34 and looking for the right man to settle down. 

When I was at medical school in Mumbai in the 80s, I had a close friend who came from a community where dowry was an accepted practice. She had come to the top medical school on her own merit and secured a seat in MD gynecology. Getting posts in highly coveted specialties like gynecology was by no means an easy task. Her prospective groom was a pediatrician trained at a private medical school outside Maharashtra. Usually, though not always, students with lower scores who did not get admissions on merit, would go to these private schools. Despite the obvious differences in their scholastic qualifications the groom’s family expected a dowry of 20 lakhs rupees from the bride’s parents. That was the current market price for a doctor groom of their community at the time !! My friend’s father defended the practice saying that matrilineal wealth conferred power to the women in the home and that it had worked well for generations. It seems debatable to me after having seen ground realities in their homes. But I will leave the judgment open.

When my parents were looking for a match in marriage for me we would meet families who frequently made subtle and not so subtle suggestions about dowry. I remember my father sitting down and explaining to me one day that eventually everything my parents owned would be for us siblings. But to give it as dowry was a bad idea. The men who expected money for marrying us could not to be trusted to value us for who we are. Such people were not entertained in my parents’ home. 

Those who have been through the process of arranged marriages will understand how the screening works. The girl is often literally interviewed in the presence of the boy and family elders. At my first meeting with my future husband and his family I was asked if I can cook. Having left home early to pursue higher education I had never really been familiar with kitchen management before I was married. Neither had I acquired any diplomatic skills. I gave a candid answer “ I don’t know how to cook“. A girl who can’t cook gets minus 50 out of 100 points in such interviews. By that count I should have flunked. But when your mother in law likes you from the moment she sets her eyes on you, you can get away with murder. My parents had missed a few heartbeats with my answer about cooking, but my soon to be mother in law had a warm smile. Just one week after first meeting that family, I was married into it. She later told me that she had liked me for my honesty. Any girl, she said, who admits she doesn’t know cooking, can learn. One who claims to know everything can’t learn. 

It is pertinent here that I tell you a bit about this woman. My uneducated MIL was raised by extended families because she lost her mother too soon. She was hurriedly married off at 14 because she was growing tall rapidly and it would be hard to find a groom to match her height. Despite no formal education the lady single handedly raised 5 kids in Pune, while her husband, my late FIL, was transferred to various remote areas for his job. She was drawn to the study of adhyatma and learned the art of performing keertans at local temples. She considered the 17th century Saint Samarth Ramdas as her spiritual guru and his teachings in the Dasbodh became her guiding principles. 

Out of her 5 children, both sons and the youngest of three daughters became medical doctors. The eldest daughter got a master’s degree in arts. The middle daughter got accepted into the prestigious government college of engineering in Pune. This was in the late 60s to early 70s. What is electronic engineering now was called telecommunications engineering at the time. Dr Sane mentioned last week the number of women in medical classes were very few in his time. That number was even lower in engineering schools 5-10 years after him. In those days when extended family heard about my sister-in-law Sheela getting accepted into engineering school they came home to my in-laws to tell them “ are you out of your mind to send a daughter into engineering?” Notwithstanding social stereotypes or pressures, my FIL and MIL confidently and very proudly sent their daughter to engineering college. She was one, of two girls in the entire class. Not only was she the first engineer woman in the family but also she became the first person in the family to move to the United States in the early seventies. Immediately upon arrival in Baltimore she was hired by NASA. My uneducated homemaker MIL and progressive thinking FIL with a degree in agriculture were instrumental in raising that daughter. 

As I am telling you about the life of my in-laws before I met them, note that we are simultaneously moving into the second phase of my life where I had acquired the status of a married woman.

My father in law had passed away before I met this family. I got to know my mother-in-law only after I was part of the family. In all the years I had known her, she had never tried to hide her preference, rather insistence, about wanting grandsons over granddaughters. She had only grandsons, 6 of them, before my children were born. When my older one was born, she was in total disbelief. Abhay had to tell her a few times that he wasn’t kidding when he was announcing the birth of our daughter. Fortunately it took her only one glance at her granddaughter to instantly come out of that worrisome denial. 

In the interest of time I will not go into details of some other incidents which uncovered her patriarchal conditioning in other matters. Particularly annoying was her partiality towards son-in -laws. In Indian culture a son-in-law is to be treated as royalty. In his presence others especially daughter-in-laws, had to settle for second class status. Although I found it to be obnoxious when I was younger, in later life I took it as a lesson for me to treat both my future daughter in law and a future son in law with equal love and respect. It makes no sense to make a distinction between the two. 

If my MIL gets the credit for raising her daughters the way she did, it is fair to make her accountable for the way her boys were raised. I think she spoilt them and the undone work came to the share of the women who married these boys! As much progressive as she was, I realize as I look back now, she was also in many areas a product of her times. 

Overall I was a beneficiary of the wisdom, love, support and understanding of a largely warm hearted mother-in-law. I know several women who did not have such favorable experiences. She was the easier part of the bargain for me when I got married. It was her son who posed more of a challenge.

He was an excellent physician who had earned a gold medal in his postgraduate studies, professionally brilliant, inherently kindhearted, simple minded and with a good sense of humor. The only problem with him was that he was raised within the Indian patriarchal system. The same system that I described earlier in context of my maternal aunt’s households.

By the time I was married I already had the taste of financial independence with my residency stipend in India. The day I got my first stipend was the day I stopped taking any money from my parents. I had to briefly relinquish this wonderful freedom when I got married and moved to this country. My husband Abhay was a resident at Cook County at the time and we rented a one bedroom apartment within walking distance from the hospital after I joined him. A few weeks after my arrival I felt an urge to eat fish like they cooked back home. I wanted to find a fish market and cook some fish at home. Abhay was raised in a vegetarian household. When I expressed my desire for fish, his Indian patriarchal conditioning was instantly aroused. “This is a Brahmin’s home! No fish will be cooked here !” Hmm, I come from a Brahmin family too but my maternal family is from Goa and they taught me to eat fish, while my father who was a Brahmin cooked and taught me to eat chicken and mutton. My in laws and Abhay all knew when we got married that I eat non vegetarian food. My mother in law in fact had told me that I should teach my husband to eat everything like me. And here this guy starts dictating rules on what I can and cannot cook in our home. I am amused at myself now when I think about how the 25 year old me responded to that unexpected slap on the wrist. I was obviously stunned and worried about my fish more than anything else yet kept a straight face and said “can this rule be temporarily put on hold until we can afford two separate apartments?” There was no further discussion again in our home about what can be cooked and what can’t. 35 years later we have not cooked and eaten up each other and though he is not yet skilled in eating fish with bones, he eats fish filets from time to time. He also found ways to rid the smell of fish from the house by turning on the kitchen vent and opening doors and windows or simply taking a walk outside. 

Another time in those early years of our marriage we were going out for dinner. Just the two of us. I got dressed up and came out to the car where he was waiting for me. “You are coming to the restaurant like this, in a saree?” he remarked with cynical surprise and authoritative disapproval. What’s wrong about that? Are you embarrassed to eat dinner with your wife in a saree? I asked. He was in a different mood that day. When he saw that I had no intention to change my attire, he simply drove off without me. I couldn’t believe my eyes. But I couldn’t see a reason to give in to his baseless demands. What was going to be a dinner date that night, ended up with me eating dinner alone at home and he at the restaurant. Next morning he woke up with genuine regret and remorse for his behavior.

I never gave up wearing the saree. Even to work. Idea was not to make any political statement but simply wear what made me feel most comfortable and good about myself while being mindful that it is not leaning on indecency in any way or breaking any reasonable rules or laws. Being different was not a crime in my understanding.

What a woman can eat or wear, if she can’t have such basic freedoms in her home or in her life, what other freedoms can she expect? 

If educated men get trapped in such narrow thinking what about others? 

As you can see I had some work to do in my marriage. As a teenager I had acquired skills for self protection. Now in my mid twenties I was thrust into asserting my independence and the right to be me. I give credit to my husband that despite his upbringing in a different kind of system he was amenable to adapt and come halfway to make the marriage work unlike some other men who refuse to change. A man with a volatile personality or rigid patriarchy would have made it hard for my marriage to survive. 

The next lesson I learned was that, for a woman to pursue a career and raise children, it takes a village. And sometimes her man and a handful of other people are her village. Both my children were born in the USA. My siblings were still in medical school and my mother was still working in India at the time. Both times my MIL made the long trip from India to come help me for a few weeks after the delivery. Then it was just Abhay and me. 

There may be many fathers who may have taken career exams with a newborn at home. But none of them would have had it like a woman who has just given birth to a newborn. When I was taking my medical entrance exams, equivalent of what is called USMLE today, my daughter was just a few days old. In those days the test would be in writing, not on a computer and it would be administered in big conference rooms in some hotel. I would complete one part of the test, go to my hotel room upstairs, feed my daughter, go take the second test, feed her in the short break, then take the third part.

Later when it was time to start residency, my son was just 6 months old, daughter 2 and half years old. My MIL voiced her displeasure about proceeding with residency , giving me the example of her doctor daughter in Pune who had taken time off from career when her son was little. I had to sit down and explain to my MIL that situation is not the same in the USA as in India for foreign graduates like me. I knew candidates who could never get residency in the USA after trying for a few years.To decline an opportunity that is at the door seemed to risk my career. Besides, in just 3 years when I would get done with my training, the kids would be still young and at the right age to enjoy quality time with their mom. It proved to be the right decision. My kids do not recall any period of time when their mom was absent from their lives. Abhay was my solid partner in raising kids as we both juggled parenthood and our respective career paths. 

I would be out on the freeway before 5 am, rounding on my patients by 5:15 am and ready for the attending’s rounds at 8 am. Every 3rd day was admitting day, overnight call. 36 hours straight in the hospital. On days when I didn’t have to stay at the hospital I would complete my afternoon rounds and be the first one to leave the hospital. One senior male resident complained to the attending about this. When my attending summoned and questioned me I pointed out that there never was a rule about when a resident can go home. Find a fault if I am leaving work undone or the work is not done right. I come to work before anyone else, I do my work with diligence and I leave when the work is done. I go to two young kids who don’t see their mother for 36 hours every couple of days. My attending was a man. He heard me. He was able to see the picture. Since that day, whether they liked it or not, nobody questioned me again about the time I come and go. 

A good dose of humor, even if it arrives in hindsight, to complement one’s natural feistiness goes a long way to navigate in the midst of flaws. It was an eye opener for me to look back at some of those forgotten moments under the pretext of this talk. Despite the genuinely good people in my life like my husband and MIL, if I had not been vehement about protecting my freedom at every step and in every seemingly trivial situation, the trajectory of my life would have been quite different. The likely scenario that would have played out would be one where there would be a victim and a villain. Instead it turned out to be a win win situation for everyone involved.

If we have time I will share one quick story before closing.

This is a different kind of scenario from what was discussed earlier. I am sharing it to give you an example of how gender equality, or lack thereof, plays out wherever you go, whether on land, water or literally, in the air. This was an incident that happened about a decade back when my daughter and me were on a mother daughter trip to Milan. Halfway into the flight from New York we heard an overhead announcement asking for a doctor on board. I promptly got up and went to the back of the aircraft. An elderly woman was having trouble breathing. The chief purser was a lady. She looked me up and down with a look of disapproval, then asked me for my credentials. I promptly showed her my medical license which I tend to keep on me when I travel. Only then she allowed me to talk to the passenger who had shortness of breath. After checking the woman it was obvious to me that she was fearful of flying and was having a panic attack. Just as I was about to make my suggestions to treat the situation, another passenger arrived at the scene. He was an older white gentleman and identified himself as a surgeon. The purser did not ask him to show his credentials, yet was quick to tell me that I was no longer needed. I returned to my seat disgusted with what had just happened. My daughter who was a medical student at the time got a close view of what it meant to be a woman doctor and one of color, in the real world. I did write a complaint to the airline. Their response was that their staff found that the other gentleman was more qualified to handle the situation!! No apology. Nothing. Medical professionals would know here whether a surgeon or a primary care physician is more qualified to treat panic disorder. Make sense out of that if you can.  The incident needs to be understood for what it revealed. 

I will pause here today. Next week I will continue with some thought provoking experiences I had in the setting of my career. I will tell you about some women I had the unique opportunity to see as patients and the insights they gave me. 

Post talk clarifications:

It felt tricky and awkward to share experiences about close family members who I greatly admire and respect, to speak about aspects where they could have done better. I am a narrator of events and my views need to be seen objectively as coming from a woman who perceived certain inconveniences in her interactions with these people. Despite those uncomfortable incidents I maintain that they are good people. Their presence in my life is a blessing and not an inconvenience. 

It is simply a journey where at every turn even today there is a learning from observed flaws both within myself and people I come in contact with. A good dose of humor, even if it arrives in hindsight, to complement one’s natural feistiness goes a long way to navigate in the midst of flaws. It was an eye opener for me to look back at my own life under the pretext of this talk. Despite the genuinely good people in my life, if I had not been vehement about protecting my freedom at every step and every seemingly trivial situation, the trajectory of my life would have been different. The more common scenario would have played out where there would be a victim and a villain. Instead it turned out to be a win win situation.

International Women’s Day is a good way to bring focus to gender discrimination and compare not just where we stand today in terms of past eras but also where we stand in real time as a country compared to other global countries and cultures. The dialogue must inspire us to take best practices into account and incorporate them into our lives, slowly but surely. 

Some things discussed by participants after the talk:

One thing I pondered about was the comment that came from Minal regarding her reaction to the statement about women standing behind the success of men. 

I see it in different light. I will talk to her about it later today. The concepts of equality and freedom fall under the domain of duality. Equal to what? Freedom from what?

All dual elements share a common sphere of existence. There is concept of men because there is such a thing as women and vice versa. When there is a reference to freedom there is an implied reference and relationship to bondage. 

Even on a day meant to celebrate women, their partnership with men need not be barred from consideration. 

Women gaining every freedom that men can enjoy does not imply that women should exist in a universe where there is no role for men. It simply means she would be complementary and not secondary to a man when they interact. I don’t see anything wrong in acknowledging that women are behind the success of men and vice versa. 

I am rather sceptical of a concept of freedom that implies separation of universes for one gender vs another, one race vs another, one profession vs another. 

As I say this I am reminded of Stephen Covey’s concepts of dependence-independence-interdependence. One must graduate from the state of dependence to independence. But not stop there. Only an independent person can participate in interdependence. And only one who participates in interdependence can be fully engaged in the world. 

This is the basis of what Amita was trying to say about partnerships. Each one needs to not only bring something to the big table but also recognize others who are at the table.

Arun said divorce rates have increased monumentally in India and laws are in favor of women. According to him many of the men in his family are fearful of getting married because they see women misusing the laws and making false allegations against men to benefit from compensation. The women and men that Arun was referring to in India are in the category who are refusing to be at the table for various reasons.

That is plain immature and myopic. 

In matters of divorce, what needs to be studied in each individual case is whether they gave enough chance for the other party before they chose the way out? These days both men and women have gotten used to instant pots,instant noodles, instant coffee, instant lottery, instant clicks in relationships. They lack patience for anything. 

Marriage is a good university for anyone who wants to graduate with top honors in patience 😊

Amita had some thoughts about an issue raised by Arun Bhargava about women abusing laws in India to harm men and this in turn being cause for increasing divorce rates and men becoming fearful of entering into marriages.

She asked that if women have shown a change in their skills with each progressive generation, why have men not bothered to evolve alongside? When they know they can’t be hired for a job unless they bring certain skills to the table, why is marriage any different? That’s a partnership too. You can’t blame women who walk away from relationships when they don’t see men bringing anything to the table. 

John spoke about his positive and negative experiences in India when he was there with his wife.