Many men in our society have the opinion that ladies should not receive an academic education, being instead trained to be good mothers and wives.
Indeed, when we examine the history of Vedic societies, this seemed to be the norm. Ladies would not have to work independently, being instead protected by their parents at a younger age, by their husbands in adult life, and by the grown-up children in older age. Men in such societies would be responsible, and even the worst demons like Ravana or Hiranyakashipu would properly protect their wives. There were no known cases of divorce, and even women who would lose their husbands untimely due to wars or other causes would be taken care of by surviving members of the family, or by some arrangement by the king. There were no cases of helpless women having to fight alone for survival. Srila Prabhupada mentions this in several places.
If it would be somehow possible to re-establish such a society, it would be hard to argue that it would not be a better arrangement than modern societies, where the ladies have to compete with the men in the work market, fighting for survival.
The problem is that we don’t have such a structure in any place in the world nowadays. Men usually don’t properly protect their wives, and grow-up sons abandon their mothers after they leave the house. The safety net previously offered by the extended families is not in place, and there are no saintly kings to protect vulnerable members of society. Marriage nowadays is a gamble at best, where very few ladies can count on receiving support from their husbands for all their lives. Even if we examine only inside our own movement, the situation is not much better. How many old ladies can you remember that are still being properly taken care of by their husbands? You will probably be hard-pressed to make a list with 10 names. Divorces are now the rule, not the exception, and abuse is rampant inside families. In most cases the husbands leave after a few years, giving little or no support for the previous wife. In many cases, the woman is left with small children and has to somehow find ways to provide not only for herself but also for the children. And these are the lucky ones who can at least get married, many ladies don’t even have such a chance, being just exploited by different men at different stages of their lives.
This is a clear case of interdependence. Without proper men to give protection to the women, it’s reckless to just tell the women to simply surrender to husbands that have not even been found yet. It’s dangerous to tell the ladies to just jump into the air hoping that the man will hold their hand, especially knowing the difficult experiences faced by other ladies. Chaste wives and responsible husbands have to come together. Without one, it’s difficult to have the other.
Would you, as a father, knowing about the shortcomings of men in our movement and of the society at large, feel peaceful at night in just telling your daughter to just surrender to her husband (who was not even found yet) and put her life entirely in his hands? What if she would not be able to get married? What if the husband would be a lazy fellow, not capable of maintaining the family? What if the husband would abandon her? In such a situation, to give some academic education for the ladies is a way to give them skills that can allow them to survive and provide for their children if the male protection fails, a safety net we can say. In many situations, a lady will be abandoned by the husband, and in others, the husband will not be able to provide for the family and the lady will be forced to work and contribute financially, and no amount of boasting about the vedic way of life will help.
By studying such complexities of our society, we can understand how such subjects are actually more complicated than they may seem at first glance. In such situations, simplistic solutions by immature individuals are rarely helpful.
Another interesting point to consider is that the view that in Vedic societies ladies would not receive any kind of education and just sit idle at home is largely mistaken.
it’s a myth that women did not work in Vedic societies. They were working possibly more than today, the only difference is that they were working in cooperation with their husbands. Some aspects of the family activities and business would be taken care of by the man and some by the lady. The wife of a Brahmana would help his husband collect ingredients for his fire sacrifices and perform other duties, and a Ksatriya wife would command the servants and other aspects of the maintenance of the palace, freeing her husband to take care of the affairs of the state, a Vaishya wife would take care of animals, produce different milk products and so on, while a Sudra wife would help her husband into his different laborious activities. It’s also not true that women would not be educated, the main difference is that they would be taught inside the families instead of going to schools outside.
From such examples, we can see that the principles of ladies working and being educated actually existed in Vedic societies, it was just implemented in a different way. When we try to transplant this system to the current society, the principle must be maintained, while the details of the practical implementation may vary. The problem is that we often do the opposite, maintaining the details, but discharging the principle. That’s when things can go terribly wrong.
Ladies being educated and working in cooperation with their husbands is actually part of the Vedic system. The problem nowadays is that the environment where people receive academic education (the universities) is very dangerous and plagued with deficiencies. Probably a combination of homeschooling and remote education would be more suitable for the young ladies of our movement, allowing them to get an education and the necessary professional skills without being sent to the “slaughterhouses” (as defined by Prabhupada) of the modern universities. By marrying boys and ladies of similar propensities, whe would create opportunities for the ladies to work in cooperation with their husbands (ideally in some kind of family business), instead of following independent careers, and allowing them to work from home, without having to sacrifice the attention to the children. This would put us much closer to the Vedic system than the stereotyped, fanatical system proposed by some.