1988 School Magazine

5a..,,',-'ti-rat in mind, I would lil

plenty of very convincing reasons why being motivated and keen atrout what you do can b,e easy and natural. For a start, let's take the simple historical fact that never before have women had the opportunities to live their lives the way we are able to today. Only a couple of generations ago, a me.re billionth of a milli-second on the grand time scale, women had extremely limited scope for what we know are their very wide-ranging talents. Few women, and them mostly of extremely strong and determined character, were able to break through this cultural mould and do some remarkable things. But most of us are not like those women; we need to feel we are doing acceptable, normal things and if we had been born 100 years ago, we unrdoubtedly would not have been given, or even have sought, the opportuniteis which we calmly take for granted today. I think it is both naive and ungrateful of us to take our present life options for granted by being careless and unmotivated in our approach to them. Consider for a minute, the position of many young women in the world's largest democracy - lndia. Although as a nation lndia is rapidly moving into the 20th, and even the 21st century, lndian families are often still forced to pay huge dowries to bridegrooms in order to enable their young women to marry. This may sound like a quaint custom to you, but its ramifications are enormous. lt appears to explain, for instance, the reason why lndia is one of the few nations in the world with a preponderance of males - 537" versus 477". Sociologists believe that because of the great financial hardship the birth of a daughter may represent, female children get less food and medical care than their brothers; some suspect that f emale inf anticide is practised in certain areas. The dangers of being a woman in lndia do not end with marriage - approximately 400 brides each year in Delhi alone burn to death, supposedly as suicide while cooking on kerosene stoves. It seems that some bridegrooms rather like the idea of collecting a large dowry more than once. This may sound gruesome, indeed it is tragic, but lest you be tempted to imagine that such things could not occur in a western civilization, let me read to you some selected passages from a judgment by his Honour Mr Justice lsaacs in a case which was decided in 1930. ln this action, a wife, Mrs Wright, was suing another woman, Ellen Cedzich, for having enticed Mr Wright away from home and having alienated his affections away from Mrs Wright. Mrs Wright claimed the lost society, comf ort, protection and support of her husband. Although such an action had always existed entitling husbands to sue for the loss of what is called the "consortium" of their wives, it was quite a novel proposition in 1930 f or a wife to institute such a claim. ln a marvellous dissenting judgment, his Honour referred to the old rule of law that: "The husband hath, by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or cruel manner." ln the same vein, his Honour referred to another case decided Z0 years earlier in which it was said by a learned judge "l can find nothing in the wife's loss of her t5