Wives, the pace-setters...

A. C. de Silva

Many women still consider their menfolk as money-making machines who earn and bring enough (or not enough) to let them run the homes! Yet, if only women pause and think, they would realise that men spend most of their waking hours on their careers. What is it, that women, as wives, mothers, and daughters, can do to help the men in their careers?

Whether educated or uneducated, women can see to it, that the men have their clothes laid out, shoes polished and food or breakfast ready, and the table laid out, before the men leave for office. As far as possible, women should not burden their husbands with minor tasks of buying things for the household or getting things repaired. It is much easier for the women to do their shopping during their leisure hours.

But if your chores at home are so great that you cannot stir out, at least take the precaution of writing out a list of what you want from him to do, and if he has not been able to attend to all your requests, you should not nag him when he returns, on his inefficiency or forgetfulness.

Many wives are much more ambitious than their husbands and egg them on or criticise them for not getting promotions or earning more. One should realise the dangers fraught with such an attitude.

If the husband is sensitive, he will react violently to such remarks, and may take to short-cuts or corrupt means to argument his income or come up in his career.

Sometimes, such constant nagging may create an inferiority complex in him, and force him further down the ladder.

Whatever he is - a clerk or a mechanic or a postman - having married him, it is for the wife to respect him as well as his career, as an honest means of livelihood, (rather than being a waster or a person who lives on others earnings) and bolster up his self-confidence, by pointing out that he is an important link in society and that he is in his own way, contributing to the nation's progress, when he does his job - however small, unattractive or insignificant it may appear-honestly and well. The essential point is to live in contentment within your means.

If only our women provide this mental filip to our men in their careers, much of the corruption, indifference, red-tapisum and inefficiency that stand in the way of the nation's progress will disappear.

Another aspect in which a woman can help her husband is not to exploit his position or career for her own prestige or her comforts and pleasure.

Very often, women do throw their weight about, especially over wives of subordinates, and this reflects very badly on the careers of the husband. It is like the traditional mother-in-law who bosses over the daughter-in-law forgetting that she was also a daughter-in-law once! Sometimes psychology works the other way too. Just because you as a wife of a subordinate was bossed over or snubbed by the wife of your husband's superior, you like to take it out, on another subordinate's wife. Either way, it is just not on good taste, and let not women be the cause of ill-feelings between officers and subordinates, that might ruin the smooth and efficient working of any office.

Educated wives can positively help their husbands in their careers in many ways like filing letters, typing, taking phone messages, and preserving all old bills and receipts that may be useful to him.

Today, men have to do a lot of entertaining of business associates and colleagues, and here again, wives have to co-operate with their husbands in making such receptions a success. There is of course the danger of our women overdoing it too.

Women must bring men into the belief that women are very feminine and still rather helpless, and to that extent, women especially educated ones must learn not to show off their education or their knowledge of their men's careers, especially in front of others. While entertaining, take care to see that you do not deflate your husband's ego, by belittling him, or his comments, or criticising him. In fact it has been found that the uneducated wife, who speaks very little and just commands respect because of her essentially feminine approach and her quiet dignified bearing, is a greater success at such business receptions or entertainments, than the talkative, educated wife, who overwhelms the men around her with brashness and her manly bearing.

Trust is indeed another essential factor from a wife to help her husband in his career. Constant suspicion and telephone calls to the office to check on his activities will actually drive him to disloyalty.

On the whole, a wife has to co-operate with her husband in all his activities that build up a career both positively and negatively.