Empowering Women- Rebuilding the Society

An except from my entry to an essay writing competition held by NRCI-ICSI

“A woman is a full circle, within her is the power to create, nurture and transform” - Diane Mariechild

Woman, not mere gender of the human race, wife, daughter, mother or friend, is an embodiment of power. She is that ultimate energy from which the whole universe is believed to have originated. Ancient Vedas have regarded woman as Shakti - the divine source. We may say that probably a woman can do almost all that a human can, but none else can do what a she can. Such is the potential of femininity.

While having to talk about woman, we can go back to olden days where the society was still evolving and people lived a rudimentary life; women mostly played a minimal role, to bear the progeny, fend the family and look after of their well-being. Though their presence was considered essential, for many reasons like fragile physical appearance and lack of exposure they were believed to be incapable to do laborious work, fight or to make any decisions for family or society. They were treated inferior to men. Chauvinism and male dominance ruled. The terms like education, employment, and earning remained dream to many.

All the advancements in life style, great inventions, discoveries and revolutionary movements over the next decades were restricted to few parts of the world. Though things turned out better with time it was always this bottom line that women need to be empowered. Even until few decades ago, they lives were pretty much about marriage at a very young age; say not more than 12 or 14, followed by number of children. There were and are many women who kept shaking their grounds and soaring high, but were countable.

Parents, who were her only support system, became reluctant to continue providing security for the girl as they had many other children to be settled and it was an expensive affair with all the prevalent social evils. Apprehensions and social pressure kept parents at bay once their girl is married into other family. This very aspect had set the roots for atrocities against women. She had to fight alone all her life and succumb to some sort pressure from her counterparts and allies.

As the generations passed, women all over the world underwent a rapid transformation. As a result of persistent dominance over women, women’s right movements cropped up in every society. A sea change has come in the world where women made their foray to education, employment, business, politics, social service, science and many other fields. Though we talk of these fancy, stereo typical terms every day we haven’t yet explored the importance of building a value and safety system for women. More often than not we do come across news of woman assaults, harassment, rapes, domestic violence, etc.

TRANSFORMATION TO A BETTER SOCIETY

Woman empowerment is a poorly construed term as it means somebody plays the torchbearer to light her up. There is not denial of the fact that even in today’s world there are many places where people are orthodox with conformist mind sets. Yet I believe it should start from within. May not be as easy as it is stated here. But a dream, an aspiration, a thought will certainly help us manifest what we need the most. And what is that we need? – an inner fire that relentlessly works towards sparking up the self and around. This may not be achieved in a fixed span of time or through a particular plan or policy. A rapid awareness about the need for treating all genders equal and identifying the human within is more important.

James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey (1875-1927, a missionary and teacher, from South Africa) had rightly stated - “The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man, you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.” An educated mother helps her children grow better. She teaches the whole family the value of life. She raises her children to be liberal yet responsible and hardworking citizens to the nation.

While all other measures help a woman upkeep her spirit, a brighter side of her can only be seen in lights of freewill experienced by her. Encouragement is the mantra. Women should participate in all possible ways to make the world a better place to live. They should be respected for what they are and what they can or cannot do. An absolute acceptance should be mirrored in the society towards all genders.

Today we have many women who excel in their respective fields and represent the country on the world stage. Every household has power women who constantly strive to raise the family. A better society is rebuilt when every village, town or city see such women and every family has a success story of their girl child to be proud of.

We need to oppugn - Is the element power unknown to woman or is power something that she has to borrow from elsewhere? The answer would be a big No. She is all powerful. She just needs to realise the power within to be more virtuous and mightier.