International Women'ds Day (IWD); can you help ?

It started almost 100 years ago in 1911 a day to celebrate womanhood. This year’s theme is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”. How true. May all of us have equal access to quality education.

 

Many of us even don’t know why such a day was started also. If I take a newspaper I get an impression that it is a mini valentine day for the people who missed the previous month’s date. Certainly this is much bigger than the impression we get through our Media.

 

Nothing much to write about today but I would like to hear more about the last two posts I wrote.

• http://zoomview.blogspot.com/2011/02/women-and-insensitive-indian-society.html
• http://zoomview.blogspot.com/2011/03/women-and-insensitive-indian-society-ii.html

 It will really help us spread the correct message (already I got many but we need more participation). We already got a small group to spread this awareness but I need few more volunteers. Anyone interested?

 

 

Women and an insensitive Indian society (II) - the reason

Thanks for all those wonderful feedback (mostly I got in email).

Almost all the e-mails mentioned about awareness and educating the people. But in a typical traditional Indian family where is the chance for such awareness? Which family gives priority to such ideals? We prefer high grades in exams but what about the awareness and sensitivity towards other lives around us? Which is the right place for such awareness? Is home the best place or at school? Schools will be more interested in securing prizes in so called cultural meets and reality shows but it’s very rare that we hear about any such cultural education being given to the younger generation.

In my own family I have seen this discrimination & this should be a very common sight in most of the families. Even when a girl child is in mother’s womb the so called rules and regulations are created in the family. She can’t do this she can’t do that. It is against our tradition. No women in our family did that …… the list goes on. I can even compile a book bigger than the encyclopedias with such don’t do list.

A lot of ladies talk about liberation, equality etc. but do they practice this? I believe if a change has to happen around us, first of all we have to change. There is no meaning in complaining about the inequalities in society if we ourselves don’t act on the principles we are preaching. There are many instances when I argued with my mom when she tried to enforce such rules on my sister. It’s anyone guess who won the argument. I lost heavily. There was no constraint on the education, love or any such things in our family among us children. Even my sister got a lot of freedom which is rarely available to other girl child in our society. I appreciate my mom and dad for that. But was she free to do all the things I was allowed to do? Certainly my sister cannot complain but there was this slight difference. She had a second grooming in cooking and other such other small household jobs. This is certainly good but soon it became her duty to do such things and I was never asked to do any such thing. Even when I volunteered, many times I was asked to do something suitable for boys; cooking and other such house hold jobs were for womenfolk. No one complained when I did cooking, washing and other such household jobs. But such occasions were very rare.

I was very fortunate that I didn’t see much discrimination in my family. But this is not the case in most of the other families. Girls are not allowed to study, they are not allowed to go out or mingle with others. In many parts of our country girls are kept like animals. They don’t have proper food, clothes, education. They are not even allowed to dream. Even when such basic things amenities are given she is under tremendous pressure. With 24x7 monitoring by family I don’t think most of them would even get a chance to breathe freely. With such pressure many don’t express their likes and dislikes. They are merely the puppets in the hands of their “strict” family. On many occasions when I went for campus recruitment I have observed this trait among the young engineers. In my professional and personal life also I have seen many who fear expressing their likes and dislikes. With a heavy baggage of the big don’t do list we cannot expect them to fight the discrimination. They are always at disadvantage. From this perspective, men think that women are weak. They can do whatever they like and they are just another instrument to satisfy their wishes. I cannot complain because no one told them otherwise. From childhood they are fed this notion that they are superior and women are second class citizens with no voice to protest, complain or express their likes and dislikes.

We can find the equality in almost all spheres of our life. If we look in our modern families we will see many working super moms who manage the office work and house. How many men help them in their daily “jobs”? In a family the onus should be on both. Men should also take equal responsibility is raising children and doing other household jobs. Last time when I had a discussion about this among my cousins I got support only from one of my brothers. Few days ago a very prominent figure in Indian society said that women should only do the things allowed by our culture. They have to first take care of the children and house. True, I agree but what about the menfolk don’t they have any culture or dharma? When men stay late in parties drinking alcohol they are called sophisticated and when women do such things they are called immoral!!!! (Personally I don’t drink or smoke so usually I don’t get invitations for such parties but still I cannot stop comparing the different perspective.). There are many such examples. Such notions of using different yardstick for same actions should be eliminated from our minds.

The attitude and approach of a gentleman who has seen equality at his home will be far different. If the parents teach with action that boy and girl has equal rights and should respect each other’s decisions, wishes then the world will be different place to live altogether. Many men are initially shocked when they see women expressing their ideas and wishes. In their family they never experienced this. So they take shelter in old Indian "culture" (but I wonder do they really know the meaning of culture.) and insult women with their words and actions.

This is a request to all those young mothers please burn that old “don’t do list”. Treat your children equally. If you deny something to a girl child, justify and use the same logic in case of your son. If your son can do it surely your daughter can also do it. From the very first day teach the principles of respect, equality and love to all others without any discrimination.

Women and an insensitive Indian society

Reading news from India, last few weeks was a real pain. It was embarrassing to read that Delhi has witnessed as many as 25 cases of rape and 42 cases of molestation. Are we still living in a modern India? How modern are we? Every day I can see faces of new monsters. We are still growing economically in single digits but the violence against women is growing consistently in double digits. National Crime Records Bureau reveals a very bleak picture. Only inflation can catch with this tremendous performance!!!

It’s the insensitivity of the general public worries the most. Some time back there was news about a woman in prison. Her crime? She was molested by a politician from the ruling party!!! I thought the law worked in the reverse fashion. Few days ago a lady was maimed for resisting the attack on her dignity. I thought such things only happen only during war (http://zoomview.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-story-of-war-mass-rape.html). But now I realize for many its war every day. They have to fight each and every step they take outside their homes. There is no guarantee that they will reach back safely. Why can’t our law enforcement agencies give adequate protection in some of the vulnerable areas? There are few areas in Delhi from where such heinous crimes were reported many times but even now we cannot find even a single police check post or even a single policeman doing the rounds.

Most of the cases the victim were alone but it seems that now it doesn’t make any difference. Few weeks back, a gruesome incident was reported from Kerala. A young lady was thrown out of a running train compartment; molested and murdered. Few people who saw this crime didn’t pull the chain to stop the train. Only because it was a night train and they were getting late, they wanted to reach home as early as possible!!! How can we behave like this? Don’t we have any moral standards left with us? Don’t we have any obligations to the society we live in? I wouldn’t mind getting late even by a day (or more) if I could save a life. Will we react in the same cold manner if our daughter, sister or any relative were under attack?

For many of us such incidents has become a routine. We (including me :( ) live in continuous denial. We believe that such things happen only in far lands & we are safe. Most of days, I am in my own world. A typical day begins with thoughts of bits & bytes, bugs, performance etc. Every day I drive to office and come back in the same manner. Given an option I would spend all my time with computers, my books, music and such stuff. Just like all others I am also busy. But with such silly excuses am I not hiding from the actual society. Some will say that we pay tax (this year I paid a very bug amount :( ) ; it is the duty of the police and government to protect and act against such crimes. Surely I agree with this but paying tax alone won’t help us. We need to raise our voice, take a break from our schedules to make this place safe for our sisters.

Am I an aberration? Am I the only person who thinks like this? Certainly not, there should be thousands of good guys thinking the same way. It doesn’t matter who the victim is, even if they are stranger, as a social being it’s our fundamental duty to protect other lives around us. Today if we don’t react against such crimes then day is not far when these criminals, empowered by our silence, will attack our sisters openly within our own house in front of our eyes (already many such incidents have happened). At that time there will not be a single soul to help us. So please act next time. Even if you get late by few hours it’s worth the effort.

My dear sisters not all of us are criminals there are many good people around. Keep yourself safe. Few days back, one of my friend, whom I like a lot, informed that she was supposed to travel outside India for an official trip. Naturally I was worried a lot about her safety. She may already know a lot of self-defensive techniques even martial arts (Next time I will surely suggest martial arts) but still the world is not so safe. In United States & other such places pepper sprays are very popular. I didn’t hear much talk about sprays in India. But it is not so difficult to get pepper sprays in India.

  

You can get the spray from the following sites in India.

•  http://www.chilliguard.com/
•  http://www.knockoutspray.com/product%20range.htm

Different countries have different laws regarding the spray but there is no legal problem in India if it is used for self-defense.

• http://studenttravel.about.com/od/womenstudenttravelers/a/pepperspray.htm
• http://www.ehow.com/pepper-spray-laws/

Looking at the situation here in our places, keeping such sprays handy is not such a bad idea.

Let’s act and make this a better place to live.