I am interested in exploring questions pertaining to the possibility of realizing gender equality within marital relationships and happy family life of couples in the age range of 20 to 55 years. I am thinking of gender here as the socially constructed roles, behaviors, feelings and attitudes expected of girls and boys, women and men, in a given society. I am also thinking of it in terms of the rights, power and privileges accorded or denied as well as the restrictions and taboos imposed on any sex. I make a distinction between sex (the condition of being male or female) which is biological, natural and fairly constant, and gender which is social, cultural, human-made, learned and therefore changeable. Furthermore, I think of gender equality as a situation where girls and boys, women and men, have equal opportunities for participation and enjoyment of rights, responsibilities and privileges in their society without any legal, cultural, political, economic, religious, or social hindrance on the basis of their sex. How is gender equality expressed in terms of distribution of roles, responsibilities and opportunities among family members? What role do educational attainment, religious beliefs and attitudes or the lack thereof, play in influencing such distribution in matters of: participation in family leadership/decision-making (about finance, recreation/vacation, child-bearing/rearing/caring, child-spacing, keeping a job or letting a job go, etc); who calls the shots? participation in home-making, cooking, serving, cleaning, etc; cultural/social symbolizations and ritualizations: that is who does what, why, when, where and how, based on whether they are boy or girl, woman or man? Who leads the family devotion for example? E.g who drives the car when the couple travels together? Who sits where at table? Who speaks and who must be silent? How are these symbolizations and ritualizations justified? Are the gendered practices around participation in roles, responsibilities and opportunities in family settings contributing to the overall wellbeing of humanity in light of the United Nations sustainable development goals? The questions raised here are not concerned with LGBT issues. Rather they are concerned with gender issues that are a matter of life and death for many women and girls in many world contexts. So please if anyone knows of real life examples of couples and families, anywhere the world, who are living on a basis of gender equality or if someone has any literature related to the subject of this research interest, I will be very grateful if they can share with me.
