All Talk and No Action

well, me thinks "marriage is not an intellectual competition". She may wanna check the SSC marks certificate is she is so particualr about qualifications.

Jis ki aankhon main AAP ke khwab nazar aayen....usi se shaadi karo...phir chahe banda ho ya bandi...bade baap ki beti ho ya slum dweller....
;)

@Ye Manzilen - Ji haan. Well said. But I don't think arranged marriages give that insight...

A good education degree (MBA, Engineer, etc.) does not ensure broad mindedness. Infact girls also need to be broad minded to accept a guy who is less educationally qualified.

But I guess, the main reason why girls generally prefer a more qualified guy as they fear that the guy might not be broad minded hence suffer from inferiority complex and this might create problems in future.

As far as guys are concerned, in arranged marriages most urban guys prefer working women.(Degress are not that important)The reason is solely economic (double income) and has got nothing much to do with woman emancipation.

In case of Love marriages, things like degree, family background, earning capacity etc do not matter.

@India unbound - True, girls should also be broad minded enough to accept men with lower degrees. Yet, historically, it's been the male ego that has clashed with a working partner and her better degree and income.

Also, the issue here is about women emancipation.

If the guy were from a well settled biz family, would he still be fine with a working wife? A wife with fancy degrees?

Even I believe that educational degrees are not the right parameters to measure the broad mindedness of a person. But no one can deny that we experience a lot of changes in us during acquisition of these degrees. Schools, colleges and higher educational institutions are the places where we meet and interact with different kinds of people. Eventually based on these interactions and degree of acceptance our ‘thought transformation’ takes place. So in this case the probability of a person being broad minded is much higher.

I can see two reasons that why do girls desire for a guy who is more educated than them. Firstly, to avoid inferiority complex this can lead to lot of problems in future (the infamous ‘male ego’). Secondly, being practical most of the girls try to relate higher educational degrees with better jobs thereby ensuring financial security.

I feel that most of the guys just show their concern about women emancipation but when the time comes to experience it they just back off. It’s not just about accepting her as a ‘working woman’ but also accepting each and every other thing which is linked to a ‘working woman’ such as her male friends/colleagues, late office timings, office parties etc etc.. Thus the conclusion would be a guy with higher educational degrees or a guy from a well settled business family may not be a right fit for a ‘working women’ but are much better prospects considering factors like ‘broad mindedness’ and ‘financial security’.

Tips: Try to identify the degree of infamous ‘male ego’ in a guy and then take your decision (the most critical issue under women emancipation)…..Happy Hunting [: D]

@ All Talk and No Action

It is true that in most cases male ego cannot accept a girl with a better degree or/and income.

As far as guy from a well settled biz family is concerned, one cannot generalise. I know of middle class guys who are happily married with better educated/ earning wife.

And I also know guys from upper class families who do not want better educated/earning wifes.

But it would be wrong to draw any conclusion from these examples.

In these cases, generalisation is the one of the common mistakes that we all do.

@Arvind - A nice analysis...I also believe that Education does bring about changes in a person's thought process, it makes a person more refined...Yet, ultimately everything depends on a person's upbringing...what he/she sees at home - eventually plays a very big role in his/her future behaviour... It has been observed that most men with mothers as housewives prefer having wives that play similar roles...
Also, your tip is definitely a bright one ! I shall use it for all my future decisions :D

@India Unbound - True, we can't generalise...

@All Talk and No Action-
Differing here, I feel that a better upbringing takes care of personal behavior but doesn’t guarantee you ‘broad mindedness’ unless and until you are lucky to have broad minded parents at home to teach you this chapter. I mean just look around and see that many of our friends have had a good upbringing but for certain things their parents are not only narrow minded but also they close their minds completely. Things like inter-caste/inter-religion marriage, guy is younger than my daughter, earns lesser than my daughter, holds lower educational degree than my daughter, girl is ‘Maanglik’, kundali is not matching, daughter-in-law should wear saari at home blah blah.. Then in these cases we interfere and try to make them understand and request them to become broad minded. We are able to do so because we have learnt these things from the outer world, from our friends, from our colleagues.

It has been observed that most men with mothers as housewives prefer having wives that play similar roles...

If that would have been true then not many men would have accepted working wives and women emancipation would have progressed at a much much slower pace as once there was a time when every mother was a housewife.

You are right in giving more importance to a person's upbringing than his education but upbringing is not "everything" that will decide his/her outlook. People from ultra conservative families change when they come in touch with modern ideas outside of their family. Most of Indian thinkers like Ram Mohan Roy, Mahatma Phule who worked for women emancipation were from such background.

Do girls whose mothers are housewives also like to end up as one just because there mothers and grandmothers were and these mothers /grandmothers do everything possible to convince the girl that girls are meant to stay indoors? Don't they have dreams of making big when they see success stories of Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi,etc and strive hard to fulfill their own dreams?

As I said in my previous reply, let us not generalise in search of easy answers.

@Arvind - Yes, by better upbringing, I did mean more open minded and liberal parents...

@India unbound - Raja Ram, Phule are rare examples. They are exceptions. In most cases, men prefer wives that are a "shadow" of their moms. This has been observed to be a norm.

Also, in case you haven't observed..girls prefer having hubbies that resemble their fathers..just like men prefer wives like mothers...Hence, the question of girls emulating moms and staying at home is not in question here..

Main point here was and still remains is - can education ensure broad-mindedness in a person...And The answer for me remains No. It can't be guaranteed.

Reminds me of a comment a friend made on seeing a visiting card with enough degrees to cover half the English alphabet:

Sir - you sure are highly qualified, I hope you are also educated.

And as Mark Twain said:

Do not let the school interfere with your education.

@Yatra Tatra - Very well said !

Incidentally I am only a graduate while my wife is a Ph.D...

And so is my father / mom...

@Yatra Tatra - That's nice to know...
So what kind of thoughts did you have
about marrying a woman with higher degrees?

hmmm.. hmmmm.. i did think about it many a times.. this is what my thinking is:

a typical male gets married at 25-28 yrs.. say 26.. and a female would be around 23-28.. say 25.. i am not talking about the marriages which happen just for happening.. by the age of 26, a marriageable boy is supposed to have done something in life.. only possibilities are education,financial security, job initiatives, thinking, hobbies..

leaving the first thing as this is the main thing here.. job initiatives.. by 26, hardly 2-3% guys would be taking very high initiatives.. also, checking it, is a difficult task and useless as well..as the answer is of course.. ki abhi to job start kari hai.. seekh raha hoon..

financial security at 26 means, you are talking about a person who is into big family business or the person had taken very big initiatives in the job or the last thing.. very high education which can give the head start in the career.. big family business means high male egos.. at least with high probability.. also, a girl of today's generation would like to be associated with someone who has done something by his own.. so again very less probability..

hobbies.. nurturing a hobby involves thinking about it and also motivation for it as well.. so lets go to thinking directly..

thinking is a set of background.. family, education, friend circle and how you learned over the time with different people, situations.. a person with a great thinking would also be thinking about career very seriously.. and would plan out things which would give him good head start.. so good education...

so education is related to many things.. just because till 26 there is 90% of life as education only.. so probability to check such thing becomes more obvious..

surely, it shouldnt work as selection criteria.. it is just like short listing people in an arrange marriage to meet..as you cant meet everyone so education works as one of the best criteria.. surely not the best.. hehe.. [:P]

regarding boys.. if they have good thinking capability, they wont mind getting a wife more educated than themselves.. but to get this thinking, there are a lot things related to good education...

sooooooo.. am i sounding weird?? [:P]

@ashkd - Errr....Some good thoughts...and LOTS of observation...
Are you an anthropologist by any chance? :)
But I somehow don't agree that a guy/gal's worth can be determined only by university degrees...
Aaj kal youth is far more informative and insightful...More focused...more aware...still when it comes to such stuff...akkal ghaas charne chali jaati hai shayad

perfectly... it doesn't give the worth of the person.. the worth can't be defined on paper only.. thinking, behavior, logic, emotions, feeling, structures, verbal responses, non-verbal responses, actions, reactions.. and many more which can't be written down in words, once again, define the personality..

but if all these things can be checked in one/two meetings and by the profile only then the word "arrange marriage" wont come into the picture..

the objective of matchmaking is not getting the perfect one for the person.. it is also not proving your worth.. and so of course, it is not giving judgment or evaluating the worth of the prospective.. it is just a way of shortlisting, getting first meeting fixed, checking that the things would work out for each other (once again, with some here and there..) and then it comes about adjustments.. if someone says that it is not the perfect one..and family is quite convinced then the boy/girl is convinced to get their mind convinced about the non-convincing thing about the so-called accepted person..

I totally accept that in current days the youth is much more informed but getting informed and having the decision making powers are two different thing.. also, getting informed doesn't mean having the ability to see the unseen or the big picture.. and getting informed about the facts is different from knowing yourself..so there is always a dilemma while talking about these things.. and it ends up selecting someone without knowing yourself as well.. so yahin se akkal ghaas charne chali jati hai.. :-)

i am not an anthropologist... not even my education.. psychology and human behavior is my interest.. mostly arts courses are my true to heart interests.. :-)

tell me something about you Mukta.. :-)

@ashkd - hmmm...lots of thoughts again :)

I am your just another blogger :)