Few days back I read a news over internet that women finally got the right to drive a car in one part of this world.This news left me thinking is this a good news? We are in 21st century and till now in some corner of the world women have to fight for such small freedom,they are being deprived of such small things like driving a car or travelling alone without male companion.
As I thought about this I felt I am privileged that I live in more free society where I got opportunity to get educated in field of my choice, have a career of my choice, freedom to travel across the world etc. But then I suddenly remembered few incidents from the past.
At one time I was chatting with my lady colleagues, all of them were educated and earned a decent pay, discussion somehow came to the topic of investment options, tax savings etc and most of them seemed to have no clue on financial matters as these were managed by their parents or husband, one of them even said why do you worry about savings “uske liye to husband hain (meaning- Husband is there to manage all savings)”, this was shocking to me….
One more such incident one of my friend told me, about her colleague whose husband used to keep even her salary account cheque book locked, if he was out of town then she had no access to her own cheque book. What is point of having a high paying job if you do not have access to your own money? Everytime you need money you need to ask someone to give you your own money?
These incidents left me thinking inspite of living in free society where women have equal rights as men are these women really free?????
Freedom is not just wearing the clothes you like, or partying with friends till late night or going on vacations or outings with friend ,according to me far more important is having financial freedom.
By financial freedom I do not mean that you tell your husband or a family to mind his own business and I will use my money my way, no… thats not what I mean…..
Investment related decisions could be mutual where both the parties have equal involvement in jointly managing the money, where each one is completely aware of all the assets they hold together and each one has right to express his opinion when it comes to investing the money. According to me only when financial freedom becomes reality then only we can really say “We are free”.
All my education as well as work experience is technical in field of software engineering and I have no financial background but still I learned about many investment options starting from simple bank fixed deposits to risky investment options like stock market so that at no point in time I have to depend on anyone financially, so I can rightfully say
“I am free women“
Dream Notepad 