We love to put the modern Indian woman under the scanner. We count the ways she has arrived. We obsess over what she wants. We analyse her life in the light of the new laws and the logic of the marriage market and love to award the "achiever".
But rarely do we talk about her "significant other": how the average Indian man looks at her; what he expects out of the holy institution of matrimony and who he considers a "suitable girl".
A suitable girl for marriage
When he was 28, his parents looked for a girl from the same caste. When he turned 34, they looked simply for a Hindu girl. And now that he is nearing 40, they just want him to find "a female". This is a survey by India today
Compatibility Counts
Is she really Miss Right? Partner preference survey conducted by Shaadi.com
- Communication is king. She should be able to debate, converse, discuss and challenge his grey cells.
- Vital attributes no longer mean vital statistics. Relationship skills, maturity and social style are in now.
- Look for emotional intelligence: how she deals with life's stickier moments and her comfort level with his people.
- Personality matters the most: a loving, trustworthy girl who will understand him and accept him for who he is.
- The flavour of the season is the strong, independent woman, who wouldn't kowtow to his every whim and fancy.
The demand for a pretty, virgin, accomplished bride from the right caste and family was prominent in the 60s
The preferred '90s woman was a professionally qualified, physically perfect, individual who also needed to be a "homely daughter in-law", matched to perfection by the stars and planets.
Sanjeev Bikchandani, the CEO of Jeevansathi, found that if the father of the groom looks for a girl who can become a part of the family like a daughter, the mother looks essentially for an obedient bahu and the son tries to balance his preferences with someone who, he thinks, will gel primarily with his mother.
What mostly men want from women?
1. Men are going beyond beauty, as we know it, and are looking at inner beauty
2. Indian men consider a bachelor's degree to be the minimum acceptable qualification for a wife
3. All most all the communities (Gujarati, Marwari) housewife oriented women are preferred
4. Especially in the metros, men are looking for working wives: doctor and engineer wives for lucrative career prospects, girls in the public sector for job stability, private sector workers or the self-employed for a better lifestyle.
The reflection on the male mirror is of a woman exuding intangible virtues-loving, mature, cooperative, compassionate, responsible and understanding.
The image of the modern woman that appears on that male mirror, rightly or not, is often of a materialistic, grasping creature, who conveniently negotiates from behind parental apron strings, places innumerable conditions before marriage and promptly moves on to the "most suitable" candidate, if needs be.
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