Why Prabhupada says women should not have independence at any stage of life?

Prabhupada speaks from a spiritual atemporal perspective that transcends changing mundane values. The problem is that we often have our brains already wired into a way of thinking.

Nowadays there is a tendency of devotees disagreeing or even trying to discredit passages from Srila Prabhupada that don't agree with their social upbringing. The problem is that when we study Prabhupada's books or hear from the spiritual master or other saintly persons with a spirit of challenge, we don't get much from it. The basic principle of parampara is to approach spiritual knowledge as a tabula rasa, discarding one's previous material conceptions.

Srila Prabhupada said many things that go against many values that are popular today, and most of it is simply because much of what many believe nowadays is just plain wrong, and the proof is all the troubles we can observe in modern societies. Popular values also change over time: many things that are normal today would be considered completely unacceptable 50 years ago, and 50 years from now will again become different. Prabhupada, on the other hand, speaks from a spiritual atemporal perspective, that transcends such changing values. The problem is that we often have our brains already molded to certain values and often find it very difficult to understand, especially when they choose to reject such explanations without even trying.

There are many such points, such as women being less intelligent, women being nine times lustier than men, women being like children, that girls should be married at 16, and so on, that may look exist or chauvinist at first, but that actually reveal quite obvious traces of human psychology that not many properly understand nowadays.

On SB 3.33.19, for example, Srila Prabhupada mentions:

"According to Manu, women, the fair sex, should not have independence at any stage of life. In childhood a woman must be under the protection of her parents, in youth she must be under the protection of the husband, and in old age, she must be under the protection of grown-up children. Devahūti demonstrated all these statements of the Manu-saṁhitā in her life: as a child, she was dependent on her father, later she was dependent on her husband, in spite of her opulence, and she was later dependent on her son, Kapiladeva."

One of the greatest problems in many societies is that unscrupulous men try to exploit women in different ways. We can see, for example, many cases of men who develop virtual relationships through social networks with vulnerable single ladies with the purpose of exploiting them financially, amongst many other examples.

Men are frequently much more interested in sex than in building relationships, while ladies are frequently the opposite, hankering for deeper relationships where they feel protected. The need for stable relationships goes very deep into women's psychology. It's extremely difficult for a lady to be alone.

Because hankering for a relationship is such an intrinsic part of the female psyche, ladies who don't have it become vulnerable to being exploited by men who learn how to seduce vulnerable ladies for sex or other purposes. After a lady is repeatedly cheated in this way, her heart becomes very hard, and this can have many negative consequences.

Ladies have a natural tendency to love and trust. We can easily notice this tendency in small girls who have loving parents. When properly cultivated, this tendency leads a lady to become a good wife and mother, qualities that combined with good spiritual guidance can easily give birth to love for Krsna. Love for Krsna is actually not such a difficult thing to develop, but it requires a soft heart.

This sequence is however only possible when ladies are properly treated. When a lady is repeatedly cheated, this propensity for loving and trusting is lost and she is deprived of the opportunity. Some men can make great spiritual progress by following the path of asceticism and renunciation, but these paths are very difficult for ladies and often lead to the opposite result. A lady whose heart becomes hard due to repeated betrayals by men thus loses her best chance of going back to Godhead in this life.

How can this be avoided?

That's what Prabhupada explains in this passage. If a lady is protected by a loving father during her youth, then by a loving husband in her adult age, and later by her grown-up sons in later age, her propensity for loving and trusting will be nourished and expanded. She will not only become a valuable asset to society but will also have the best chance of becoming a pure devotee of Krsna.

Loving wives and mothers are the backbone of any civilized society. It's not by chance that the Manu Sanhita mentions that a place where ladies are mistreated is permanently abandoned by the goddess of fortune. When ladies are neglected and mistreated they become selfish and bitter, which leads to all kinds of problems that destroy a community from the inside. We can observe that communities in our movement where ladies were not well treated in the past faced serious problems.

When Prabhupada says that a lady should not be given independence he implies that a lady should be protected at every stage of her life, and not that she should be treated like a slave or something similar. We should always take into consideration that Krsna Consciousness automatically implies treating everyone with the utmost respect. When such care and consideration are not present it quickly degrades into a demoniac exploitative culture, that we had the misfortune of observing in many episodes in our movement.

When one is being exploited, independence sounds like a good idea, but when one is being properly taken care of, independence sounds foolish. Because in most modern societies men are not properly trained to protect their daughters, wives, and mothers, ladies have to resort to being independent to protect themselves from exploitation, but when there is the opportunity, to be protected it is a much better deal. It is quite an obvious point.

One of the difficulties is that when men read such passages they think that they are already perfect and that the problem is with the ladies, who are not willing to surrender to them.

When a man has good qualities, is proper in his behavior, and is capable of properly protecting a wife in the material, psychological, and spiritual spheres, it is not very difficult to find ladies who will voluntarily want to surrender to him. He will then just have to be a little intelligent in his choice. The problem is that it is not so common to find such men nowadays.

In a society where all daughters, wives, and mothers would be properly protected, independent women would be considered foolish. Feminism and other similar philosophies look attractive only because men are not properly playing their roles. The solution for all these problems is thus not so much about bashing the ladies, but more about properly training the men.

This brings us to the point of generating good children and properly educating them, which Srila Prabhupada also approaches in his writings, and that we may discuss another day. Proper men don't grow in trees: they have to be trained from the beginning.

All these ideas are explored in Prabhupada's teachings, but not everyone is capable of understanding them.