One of my 32 year old married male colleague was telling me that return to office is the norm, that the commercial real estates will lose value if we don't return to office, and his tone made it clear that he supports complete work from office fully. I pointed out how in one of the major tech company of our country, because they stopped wfh, a huge percentage of the female employees were forced to drop off the workforce. Our society is Patrilocal and patriarchal, so the females were not anymore allowed to continue office if they were not staying at home and staying available for in-between-office chores for the husband's house or for the training of it in their natal house. He was saying this reduces female efficiency. However, when male colleagues kill a lot of time in office doing nothing but gossiping, idle talks, then they don't kill time, that's just office work. He also said, women should choose better husbands, supportive husbands like him, so that they can continue their careers. His wife writes blogs, and is a full time housewife apart from that. I didn't exactly see his support for his wife's career but let's take the 50% possibility and assume that it's she who chose to stay at home and take full time care of their kid, while this man is in office, 3 days a week, for 9-10 hours. But how is it fair to tell women to choose better men and not tell men to be better men? And, here comes the climax. He was bitching about how his wife complains to him about so much. He said even he also had many complaints against her, but he doesn't let them out because he sees how she is busy at home and with the kid the whole day. I said good for you and thought aren't you doing worst than that? As per you, okay, you are not discussing your dissatisfaction with your wife, but you are blaming your wife in front of your colleagues. Dude, don't you understand if you really want to make your relationship better, you need to give time to your wife and to your household and your kid? Don't you understand a wfh system will help you do that? Why the heck then are you against that? It just seems like you don't want to leave the carefree life of shutting down the home window and coming to office and be carefree. It just seems like you are not ready to work your part to better your relationship, and yet, you love to complain about your wife to your colleagues.
The other day, another young male colleague was asking him some very intrusive questions about his wife. He is a freaking misogynist and was asking why that man was buying dinner from outside if his wife is at home. Why won't she cook? Like it's not a mutual agreement thing between the husband and wife, like every Tom, Jack and Harry get to criticize the woman for not performing her gender-roles. I could say nothing, but was very angry.
But now I see, it's not only the young colleague's fault. This married man, just like he bitched about his wife to me, surely did the same with him too. He took advantage of that.
If I was in his wife's position, and got to know about this, I would be very heart-broken. He breaks her trust of privacy. I could've just left him.