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Veiled Eve—Examining the Politics behind
Women Empowerment
The term woman empowerment is frequently used by anyone and everyone who wants to define welfare for women. But can we define it well and cover all the aspects?
We need to first ask ourselves if woman empowerment simply means welfare for the woman. Does it have something to do with providing women with reservations in various fields of professions, or is it simply a case where some women born with a silver spoon, work towards improving the lives of the not so fortunate other women?
Well! It is not only difficult, it seems impossible to be able to define women empowerment. Defining a term is capturing the essence of its meaning in a concise manner.
A term like women empowerment cannot be defined in a line or two as it not only depends on the varied perceptions of an individual, but also on what all can be encapsulated within this two-worded term.
Talking of varied perceptions, a few examples below point out how in different parts of the country, people are working towards bringing about a change for women.
A long time ago, the local king of a small town called Bhavnagar in Gujarat took the brave step of giving the women of the Bhoi tribe a chance to earn their own living by getting out of their protected shelters and doing a man’s job. He provided them with licenses to work as porters on the railway station. It was revolutionary and allowed to taste independence.
Another such individual, a bank manager by profession, noticed the sad state of women of a nomadic tribe called Dombars in Karnataka, who in the earlier times were circus performers. The slow death of such an amusement activity forced the women of this tribe towards prostitution.
The bank manager realised that their deteriorating lives held little hope. With the help of the bank, he set up a coir processing unit, thus providing them with employment. The bank also aided them with small loans to set up their own businesses.
Another example of such empowerment comes from a district in Tamilnadu, where the government in 1991 worked towards teaching women from villages how to ride bicycles. This not only gave these women a sense of independence, they also started travelling distances in order to pursue their dreams like studying and learning new vocations.
For many, simply working towards making women more independent and stronger as individuals is empowerment. The strength could be anything ranging from educating them to teaching them how to fight in self-defence. And the independence may mean their becoming more self-reliant. But there is always more to it.
There is more work required to be done from the scratch and not from the next level. Start querying!
Why did the need for women empowerment arise in the first place? Why is our society in this state today? Why not bring a change in the society to begin with? Why not start from the grass root level to bring about a change in the society? If there is no discrimination against women, there would obviously be no requirement for such a movement called women empowerment. So why not begin digging and changing the quality of our land?
Female foeticide and female infanticide is still prevalent in the dark corners of our society. In certain set ups, Sati is still considered as the right thing to do for a wife after the loss of her husband. Widowed women are shunned as outcasts even now. What are we developing into?
My guess is, probably a nation easily divisible into a first world and third world categorisation; a nation living amidst the constant turmoil of contradiction. We cannot call ourselves one country, where on one hand we have women reaching the space and ready to govern the whole nation and on the other we have young female infants being killed and female foetuses being aborted at an early stage. This portrays the double standards that we resort to in order to prove to the rest of the world that we are constantly progressing.
Empowering women is not only about teaching and providing them with stronger weapons like education and awareness; it is also about t society taking a ‘U’ turn from hypocrisy. Female infanticides, female foeticides, and Satis have to be stalled. These cannot continue in today’s world of nano technology!
What needs to begin is a movement to empower the girl child from the very beginning of her existence. Their upbringing needs to be changed. They cannot be brought up in an environment where women are taught to remain subdued; their aspirations cannot be curbed because they are females, they cannot be ignored.
Society needs to change itself and the way it thinks. The girl child needs to grow learning that she is no less than her brother. She needs to know that a wide range of avenues wait for her to be explored in this world of hi tech lifestyle. She needs to know from day one that she is loved and cared for and that she is wanted.
Women empowerment drives and initiatives will continue and some will do wonders in achieving their goals. But the real difference will come only once the foundation of our society undergoes dramatic transformation.
Once that has been done, the work of empowering the rest of the women population would become an easy task. Thus, it may be a wiser idea to change the quality of the seeds we sow, instead of trying to save the crop later.
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Developing India-centric content for a new web portal targeted at NRIs