Since last few days I am getting bumped into messages, newspaper articles and some other stuff all related to women empowerment in India. Its been a big topic of discussion and action since decades in India. Having missed the last Sunday show of Satyamev Jayate, I thought of seeing it on yahoo yesterday night. And it too turned out to be on women empowerment, not totally but in a way yes. The show was all about empowering women who had been victims of dowry and financial mess their family had been put into because of the heavy expenses they had borne in their daughter's marriage.
I've always been a believer that everything has its pro's and con's. Like the 2 sides of a coin.
Today I was reading a newspaper article, wherein the topic was about women accusing men of RAPE in a relationship gone sour and filing a police complaint against them. Its true that many men lure women with false promises of marrying them and than getting into a relationship. Its in a way a kind of cheating which is absolutely not tolerable. During the course of their relationship they had consensual sex. But once the woman comes to know that the man is making excuses to marry her and all this time he was making false promises, the woman goes to the police and files a complain of rape. The newspaper article states a lawyer's argument that in such cases wherein both persons, the man and the woman are adults and since sex happened with the consent of both it cannot be termed as rape, but instead the case happens to be of cheating and fraud. The article also states that the number of such cases in recent times have gone up drastically. Many times a relationship gone sour, turns out to be like a nightmare for the man, for the woman in the relationship who doesn't want to leave the man, just files a rape complain with the police against the man, gets him arrested and he has to spend 15 days in judicial custody before being granted bail.
Over the years in India, many laws have been made to empower women in India. The atrocities, humiliation and problems they have faced and are still facing definitely need to be taken care of by we the people of India and the govt. The laws that have been formed after independence to empower women, and making women aware of them surely has helped a lot in making their lives better. But, but many times the same laws are used in the wrong way and its very much possible that a genuine guy gets into trouble. The laws are not to fight someone, they are there to protect people.
Over the years it seems like the major part of our social structure is lacking maturity. Seems like our age old conservative social structure is finally taking its toll on the young generation. Marriages and relationships are such important part of any society, that if they are not handled with maturity the society is gonna come crashing down. So many questions are coming up in my mind when it comes to understanding the social structure in our country right now.
- Why have we today reached a stage where both men and women are not able to understand the intricacies of relationships ?
- Why are parents not bringing up their sons and daughters in such a way that when they grow up they are mature enough to respect the opposite sex ?
- Why are daughters not brought up in such a way that when they grow up they are confident enough to take care of their financial and emotional needs ?
- Why is that in most families a woman is not allowed to work so that they can have their own money and if they do why they are still not given respect ?
- And if woman in a family works to earn money for the family, why can't the man in the house take care of the kids and the house and help the woman ?
- Why teenagers are stopped from dating and especially the girls are almost kind of banned from socializing with boys ?
- Why aren't boys taught at home to respect girls ?
- Why today, boys and girls if a relationship gone sour consider that the life gets finished if their relationship comes to an end ?
Laws to empower women is surely a way to protect them and they should be there. But that's not the solution to the problem we are facing. Laws that empower women in India are now a days always used in false ways by women to fight innocent or genuine men. So I still feel that its more on to our society, parents and elders to change the mind set of the new generation. But first for that our conservative society and parents will have to change their shallow mind set. And then only I feel India will have a society where in laws to empower women will be there, but there won't be instances or cases to use them much. :)
Interesting read! As I am not that familiar with Indian society it is hard for me to give a good balanced opinion about this particular subject. However, right now I am working on a project about child rights in Bihar and by just looking at the raw facts it seems that girls have a significant disadvantage over boys in society here. For instance, attendance ratios to primary school for girls are at least 10% lower than for boys and two thirds of the girls below 18 get married while law prohibits this. Another thing that struck me was the current sex ratio in Bihar is only 917 females to a 1000 males. All this adds up to me as women being severely discriminated and they are not allowed to fully develop themselves.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, women empowerment can not be realized by simple laws protecting women rights (we can see from child marriage that laws are severely violated anyway). It is the mindset of the people that has to change. As Indian society is still a big puzzle to me I have not any clue how to change the minds of the Indian people :) I guess it begins with creating awareness...
In Holland, we have these national campaigns launched by the government to address certain problems AND taboos in society. Such as child abuse (also sexual), safety at home and on the road, alcohol/drug abuse, rape/molestation, discrimination etc. etc. Part of these campaigns are advertisements on tv, radio and in newspapers. These are usually really shocking to watch (maybe because they are so true to reality) and people start to talk about them when they are shown. The awareness it creates changes people's attitudes to the issues addressed by the national campaigns.
Indian society is of course totally different from dutch society and by any means to me the Indian society is much more interesting. In any case more complex :) Nevertheless, creating awareness about discrimination of women, child marriage, foeticide/infanticide and related issues may go a long way in empowering Indian women.
You are absolutely right Sibren, that just laws cannot change all this. Laws might just prevent some or punish the culprits. The whole thing is about the mindset of people which needs to be changed drastically. Its possible only by education and awareness. Its been going on since many decades, but I guess much more efforts are needed. And I suppose its gonna take a long time as its a huge nation and more so a huge mix of population and culture. Pity that a great nation now has a not so very great population.
DeleteNipun, you know that the indian society is unique. In my opinion you need to change the traditions or at least to ban them officially. For example, the baby girls are killed and abortions are had because of dowry. Lets the governemnt state that any kind of dowry is banned officially and girls' families dont need to give dowries to males' ones... It will result that girl's family will have the right to protest against it. Another problem is a conservatism, which you mentioned above, social pressure, unhappy familis becauase of engagement and ext. This feature is more complicated and even when a guy doesnt mind to merry a girl beeing in love accasionally doesnt help him because the girls have been brought up to be engaged...and he is forced to go for an arrange marriage...and Actually arrangements are maybe a healthy practice in India, because it helps to control popultaion. in Ukraie we have tons of young females abandonded with a child...and abortions also.
ReplyDelete