Women, the seat of creation is but neglected and underrated in a country like India, where the traditional spiritual beliefs hail Mata Shakti who too is emblematic of woman power. You’ll find people lighting uncountable lamps, offering pujas and donations everyday at the temple of the Goddess, but simultaneously inflicting horrendous torture on the women in their own house or in the society at large. Such contradiction or better to say ‘hypocrisy’ exists in our country where women are forever miserable under several spoken or unspoken misogynistic social rules & regulations that have been favouring the men always.
Even today, though India moves towards a brighter tomorrow, being a woman can still be a challenge. And sadly, all the changes you do see are evident only in the metro cities, while it can safely be said that the women of rural India still have a long journey to cover before they can expect a life where they are treated as an equal to men.
Urban Indian women get more opportunities; the rural ones still deprived
After the Indian independence, certain positive changes were seen in the condition of women. The waves of the feminist movement that started in the west revolutionized the entire world and India too came under its impact. With the changing times, westernization & globalization took the modern India into its grasp, but all the influences were limited to the urban India only. Even today when we talk of the modern independent Indian women, we always have the educated urban woman employed in some high profile job in mind. None of us, very honestly, think of the conditions women in the rural or the most remote parts of India live in. Why is it so?
It’s because at the bottom of our heart we too know that when we talk of gender equality, progress and upliftment in modern India for women, these changes are actually limited to a minority concentration in the urban areas or metro cities; rural India is totally beyond it. Better education facilities, schools, colleges, universities, offices all exist in the towns and not in the villages. So urban women who get a better exposure to these facilities can only get a strong foothold on society through economic independence, while the unfortunate rural women are deprived of all these life-changing factors.
Rural India sinks into discontent when a girl child is born!
With illiteracy, comes the darkness of ignorance. Even today in many of rural Indian homes, people lament when a girl child is born. Since in villages they don’t get proper exposure to educational facilities, most never being sent to school at all as they are considered a ‘burden’ that must be married off soon, they cannot appreciate the worth of a woman; the hidden power in her.
If a girl child is born often the in-laws show utter discontentment and blame the mother for giving birth to a girl. This is because these rural mother-in-laws themselves have no knowledge of the science behind reproduction; still believing the woman is to blame when a girl is born. At times she will be the one who will go to the extent of committing the crime of female infanticide.
Male-dominated mentality very much prevalent till date
In other words the male-dominated mentality of the people living in the Indian society is still very much prevalent. This is because it’s not possible to deconstruct the age-old male-dominated social construct of the society in a single day.
Be it dowry-related bride burning or the sexual violence or rapes that are so rampant now, be it domestic violence or marital rapes, be it early domestication of women or the growing problem of eve teasing India reflects its societal mentality; you find a glimpse of ‘anti-woman’ male-dominated mentality each and every time a new crime is reported.
A lot more change is needed
Though modern Indian woman claims to be educated and independent and she feels that she has every right to pursue whatever career she wants, society however very tactfully rather in a very scheming manner fences her out of some of the domains which are still very much called to date as the ‘man’s domain’.
For example you’ll hardly come across women drivers, labourers, industrial workers and bartenders. In the sports field, mechanical field, Army, Navy, Mining fields too, the entry of women is very limited which indicates that the society even in this 21st century is not ready to open doors in these fields for women whole heartedly.
Be it rural or urban India, the challenges of being a woman is evident everywhere. These challenges might have a different face in different places, but we are still far from having overcome them to offer true ‘upliftment’ to the Indian woman.
No comments:
Post a Comment