Does it take a man to complete a woman?

By Shiveena Parmanand
Inquirer

“SHIVS, women today have only two options: They can either get married or become hags,” one of my teachers very smugly informed me a few months ago. I’m not sure if he was being serious or he was being sarcastic, but his words continue to haunt me to this day.

There are so many confident and accomplished women in my school and community -- all but one of our school paper’s editorial board are females, the main officers of our student council are females -- and all around the world, women are climbing up the social, economic and political ladders. Even our President is female (OK, not a brilliant example right now). So it was just disheartening to have it flung at me so carelessly that society continues to think women’s achievements pale in comparison with their marital status.

Thankfully (or maybe not, since it sweeps the issue under the rug), we have become too politically correct to say things like that in a formal classroom setting. But looking back, I realize that I shouldn’t have been so shocked to hear that remark. My teacher’s way of thinking is neither new nor uncommon. That idea is heard everywhere from online dating ads to the advice columns where lovelorn women bemoan their fate and even schools, apparently!

My generation of females faces an incredibly difficult challenge. On one hand, there are more opportunities available to us so that we are able to see what the world has to offer us and more importantly what we have to offer it. On the other hand, we are still being held back. People who are in positions of authority continue to impress upon us the absolute importance of marriage. Brilliance and ambition are not enough for a woman to be considered a success, not if she’s going to remain unmarried. She has to have a man to complete her, to support her and protect her.

While filling out my college application forms, I have to skip about a decade ahead into my future and formulate the standards by which I will judge myself. As I attempt to come up with a list of women I consider successful, I ask myself how large a role their marital status played in their careers. Right now, my goals go far beyond marriage. Does that mean that I am destined to become an ugly, old woman (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary’s definition of a “hag”) because my goals are more career-oriented and individualistic? Do I have to re-evaluate the things I want to do and make sure that marriage takes precedence over everything else, lest, God forbid, I waste my youth trying to find myself and in the process fail to find a husband and end up being a hag?

I cannot understand why we continue to think that marriage is the only way to happiness and completion, what with all the stories we hear about marital infidelity, domestic abuse, marital rape and even murder. How much longer are we going to pretend that these things do not happen at all, cannot happen to us, or were deserved by the victims? How much longer will our so-called authority figures tell little girls that unless they are married they will end up being old, ugly women?

Shiveena Parmanand, 16, is a student at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University High School.