Teena Muthoo Koul
We talk of fallen women never a fallen man, but women would not fall if men did not trip them.
Where we talk of gender equality and high moral values for our women folk, we often forget to provide them support at times and the reason is obvious, people often tag them as being feminist or empty headed but in reality women are not Anti-men or empty headed, it’s just that ‘wemen’ want equal rights, dignity and self respect.
Now let us first understand what does feminism mean. Feminism is intersectional not excluding people based on their gender, race, socio economic status or sexual orientation. Feminism allows people to look at the world not as it is but how it could be. In other words feminism means walking towards achieving Global gender equality. It refers to a number of collections of movement and ideologies that advocate women’s rights and seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in all spheres. One who talks about the empowerment and emancipation of women without demoralizing men’s position in society is a feminist.
Nation still has to anticipate the proper task of parenting, where in parents need to educate their sons to respect women hood and such teachings should be inculcated from the very beginning.
In the 21st century we boast of the ideals of gender equality and still cases of women exploitation are not unheard of. Women are not given opportunities equal to men in life whether it is upbringing, education or employment. Societies should change their mindset so that women are treated equally to men and should be empowered to take their own decisions in life. Unfortunately the pervasive ideology of people today rests on the assumption that the ideal Woman must be in corruptly good, utterly unselfish, compassionate, an epitome of grace, self effacement, and an embodiment of morality, sacrifice and her proper sphere should be her husband only. So in a way a woman should make complete self abnegation for others without the wish or desires of her own. We often hear women are victim of oppression at the hands of the patriarchal society. She is subjugated by our husband and the wedding band lay heavy on her hands. She is so terrified that she cannot openly resist the oppression. I suggest and personally believe that all these Women must come forward and express their bitterness and anger against male dominance through their writings or protest fearlessly.
Last month I finished reading one book though reading books have lost its worth, courtesy to technology but I always vouch for it due to its therapeutic effects.
The title of the book ‘The Scarlet Letter’ was too infectious to captivate my mind and interest. Written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, the story revolves around the central protagonist Hester Prynne, a young woman who was punished in front of a crowd for giving birth to a baby of unknown paternity. Her sentence requires her to stand on the scaffold for three hours expose to public humiliation and to wear a Scarlet ‘A’ for the rest of her life. As Hester approaches the scaffold one of the women in the crowd was angered by her beauty and quite dignity and when cajoled to name the father of a child, she refuses.
The Scarlet Letter for Hester is a physical manifestation of her sin and a reminder of her painful solitude. She contemplates to obtain her freedom from an oppressive society and a past as well as the absence of God. The same examples can be witnessed about women all over the world particularly in India who are portrayed as womanly and the moment they step out of the brackets of moralities or transgressed their code of domesticity, they are regarded as damned and scorned as the vilest of her sex. It’s quite strange to acknowledge the fact that a woman is punished and tarnished for the sin she has not committed alone rather her chastity is violated by a man. She’s starved, beaten up and brutally humiliated by everyone to suppress her emotions until her confidence and soul is fragmented and torn into pieces.
Nowadays such notions have changed and women have their own voice to raise and mind to think. Women are brave, true bravely women who can live their lives in freedom ignoring the conventional commands and no longer be stereotyped into groups of Good or Bad. On the contrary today it seems to me that attacking women has become the best defence for men to camouflage their own flaws and here my heart is forced to ask a million dollar question to the society at large…. Have we done anything for the liberation and edification of women, theoretically everything but realistically nothing.
The author is Assistant Professor (English)
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