Set-up of men and women working

We live in a time zone where you find men and women work together side by side. This set-up has normalized several things like having relationships, closeness and intimacy and forgetting the necessary boundaries.

In such a context, I like to refer to the Holy Book of Quran and what Allah says about the male and female relationships. When reading and reflecting, I realize women’s primary role with regards to men is getting married or other wise worshiping God and purifying the heart from evil intentions.

For example recites like: “… stay in your homes and don’t over beautify yourselves…” or “…. they don’t show their beauty except to their husbands, fathers, sons,….” or “… you are your husbands covers and your husbands are your covers..”, or “… don’t be too soft when talking to men or those who have disease in their hearts would be greedy..”. All these recites teach us the basic behaviors and actions that we women need to remember when interacting with men.

Yes we need to interact and work with men regularly because of the nature of work requirements. But at the same time, we need to remember our feminine nature, the boundaries we need to have during our interactions and not to allow such working set-up to take us away from our faith and characters.