Women - Wemen

We, proud Indians of 21st century, rejoice in celebrations when a boy is born. If it is a girl, a muted or no celebrations is the norm. Love for a male child is so much that from the times immemorial we are killing our daughters at birth or before birth, and if, fortunately, she is not killed we find various ways to discriminate against her throughout her life. Though our religious beliefs make women a goddess, we fail to recognize her as a human being first; we worship goddesses, but we exploit girls. We are a society of people with double-standards as far as our attitude towards women is concerned; our thoughts and preaching are different than our actions.

Women are brought up since their childhood that they are the weaker gender and they are supposed to be under the protection of a man. They are constantly reminded that they are physically weaker. Educating girl child is still seen as a bad investment because she is bound to get married and leave her paternal home one day. Thus, without having good education women are found lacking in present day’s demanding job skills; whereas, each year’s High School and 10 2 standard results show that girls are always doing better than boys. This shows that parents are not spending much after 10 2 standard on girl child and that’s why they lack in job market.

The unfortunate part of gender inequality in our society is that the women too, through, continued socio-cultural conditioning, have accepted their subordinate position to men. And they are also part and parcel of same patriarchal system. The inequality or discrimination against women is at various levels in the society, either in home or outside home.

In India, everything from rivers to mountains, those which we consider pure, are named after women. While this is to honour the gender, paradoxically this has been curbing the women of their freedom for ages in this country. We, men, equated women to an object and purity and that explains our protective nature, which in turn is the caused the conservative nature of women, crushing their freedom right from their very homes. This very mentality, led many men of evil nature to destroy the purity of women, while considering it as an act of power, induced by perception of women as an asset.

Our own literature has proven this as well. In Silapathikaaram, Kovalan is in an extra-marital affair with Madhavi and when he realises his mistake, he apologizes his blunder and appeals to Kannagi. Kannagi was broad-minded and she accepts her husband back, ever so lovingly. Now tell me, would that have been the case were the roles reversed?