“A woman’s real business is to look after household affairs, keep everything neat and clean, and if there is sufficient milk supply available, she should always be engaged in churning butter, making yogurt, curd, so many nice varieties, simply from milk. The woman should be cleaning, sewing, like that.” ( Srila Prabhupada – Letter to Chaya, 16 February, 1972 Calcutta )
Yogesvara: Here’s a problem. The women today want the same rights as men. How can they be satisfied?
Prabhupada: Everything will be satisfied. Just like our women, Krishna conscious, they are working. They don’t want equal rights with men. It is due to Krishna consciousness. They are cleansing the temple, they are cooking very nicely. They are satisfied. They never say that “I have to go to Japan for preaching like Prabhupada.” They never say. This is artificial. So Krishna consciousness means work in his constitutional position. The women, men, when they remain in their constitutional position, there will be no artificial… ( Srila Prabhupada – Morning Walk, May 1, 1974, Bombay )
Recently it’s been preached by some devotees that ISKCON has to catch up with the times and follow the feminist trends that are currently prevalent in Western society, if we desire to achieve any success in our preaching at all.
But there’s a fundamental problem in trying to follow the trends of the material world. As Srila Prabhupada said, gacchati iti jagat — the material world is always moving. The United Kingdom is widely known as one of the most liberal and progressive countries in the world, but now it’s also the home of a fast-growing movement known on Twitter and elsewhere as #tradwife or #tradwives.
In fact, it’s already strong enough to catch the attention of major media outlets in the U.K., such as in this 6 minute video produced by BBC News on the subject.
If the material world moves so fast, maybe it’s better if we simply stick to the eternal: the Vedic culture and traditions that have been taught to us by Srila Prabhupada. Trends come and go, and social trends in favor of our preaching —such as this one — will always arise from time to time anyway.
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Right, Western policy is to lower the wages for men and rise living costs so that women also have to work in order to maintain a family. The underlying policy is of course to stop population growth. Make family life as difficult as possible. Prabhupada also says that when the situation is very difficult then do not have children —"I did not know that maintaining a family was such a difficult job here (USA)". In other words, do not work hard to maintain a family, Prabhupada: The sastric contraception means that "If you cannot educate your sons how to stop repetition of birth, then don't become a father. Don't become a mother." Or, as an old saying goes: "It takes a village to raise a child". Prabhupada's vision of starting vedic villages, farm communities did not yet really manifest, so the time for having a solid foundation for exemplary grhastha households in the Western hemisphere might not yet have come?