Invisible Terms: Unequal Roles in Married Life
In many countries, married couple is called “husband andwife”. However, it is different with when they address each other in public. It is an interesting hidden gender object on how women and men address their spouse or partner in public. The meaning of “marriage” in Burmese is “အိမ္ေထာင္က် Ain-Htaung-Kya” which means “house-prisoned”. Therefore, the literally getting marriage seems like being in prison for both woman and man. The new titles that man and woman normally get as soon as they got married, really distinguish the role of married couple both in household and in society.
In japan, married couples traditionally call each other “主人-Shujin” for husband; meaning the head of the family or the main person/owner. The word for wife is “家内-Kanai”; meaning one who remains inside the home. In Myanmar married couple not only gets the name husband and wife but also get new title as they become a family. In public, instead of introducing wife as “this is my wife”, husband usually use “အိမ္ရွင္မ Ain-Shin-Ma” which means “housewife or housekeeper”. This is just a title that married woman get but the meaning goes beyond it. Because of being a housewife, woman is dependent on her husband regardless of her education, class and job. Women’s main responsible are for managing the household chores including child caring and well-being of family member. While husband is usually entitled as “အိမ္ဦးနတ္ Ain Oo Nat” which means the lord of the home who lives in the front room of the house or “အိမ္ေထာင္ဦးစီး Ain Htaung Oo See” which means leader of the home. Because of husband has the position like Lord or Leader, wife is supposed to treat husband as God. One of the Burmese traditional sayings for married woman how to treat male is “Husband as god, son as master”. Burmese women are really attached to their sons and husbands, and respect them a lot. If they cook a meat curry, they reserve the best part of the meat for their husbands and sons, then their daughters, and finally they eat only the left-over sauce. This is the tradition and many women do this.
Wife or mother not only demonstrates her full role as housewife or housekeeper, she also pass it on the roles to her sons and daughter. Girls are taught to wash plates, take care of her siblings, help their mother in household chores but boys don’t. Girls lose their rights to have equal opportunities like their male sibling. The teaching includes the concepts that girls after grown up have to become good housewife and boys will become household leader.
Wife or married woman has the main responsibility to do the domestic chores. If married woman does not want to quit her job, she has to do double job. On the other hand, for men, whether he is working outside to earn money or he is at home drinking all the day or he get less income than his wife, he is still head of the home. Husbands may also feel the pressure of being the head of the house since every family member is dependent on him. If he cannot demonstrate masculinity that the society defined, it is a big shameful thing for him. And also in Myanmar culture, if man is at home and work domestic chores, while woman is working for income, it is a huge disgrace for men group. He can be humiliated as unworthy and living his life under woman’s skirt.
These words are not only defined by society and the roles are constructed but it also enforced legal system. In family registration, only husband can be registered as the head of the family and the person with authority. Men are the legal representative of the family members and all its household affairs. Because of woman cannot be authorized person or head in household, she do not have right to own and control over protective resources such as house, apartment and land.
The titles of the couple also effects in the conflict area. In general, man supposed to be protector of family but in conflict situation, women are the protectors of man. Because of men are heads of the home, leaders of the community, men’s lives are more valuable than women. Whenever, enemies or soldiers came into village, women have to hide their husband and talk with soldiers because families do not want to lose their head.
The division roles for man and woman in private space gives more privilege for man and it spread out to public area. The titles that were given to married couple is just simple word but it has so much meaning that need to be redefined.
