She's always a woman to me...
Its INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY n I just got this fwd.. "The Value of a Woman: Be careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears. A woman came out of a man's rib, not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior over, but from his side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved." Sigh! I'm tired. Tired of ignorant fools who insist on picking one freakin' day of the year to "celebrate" women. Oh joy! its women's day.. This means I get 20% off on sarees from Pitambari, I get 10% off on health check ups at all city hospitals AND I get to listen t a lady DJ play at a pub tonight!! Yeah, I feel special!! NOT!!!
Female genital mutilation, occupational stereotyping, rape, domestic violence, oppression, broken spirits, diminished confidence. A simmering controversy has been brought into public gaze - a new study estimating that 10 million girls have gone “missing” from India’s population since 1985 because of the practice of selectively aborting female fetuses. TamilNadu's sex ratio has dropped (number of women to men) by 20% in the last 5 years. Only 52% of India's women are educated. 73% of Indian girls die at birth!!! 73%!!!!! 37% of India's women have a Higher Secondary education. So what exactly are we celebrating today?
I am proud of the women who have survived these statistics and have even gone beyond. I am proud of the women who have surpassed hurdles and achieved great things. I am proud of the woman who has let her voice be heard and lived her dreams. I am proud. But lets not ignore the statistics above.. 'cos those are not just numbers. They are a startling image of the way this country treats its women. So if you want to pick just one day in a year to tell me I'm special, come closer.. I have a particular finger I'd like to show you.
Female genital mutilation, occupational stereotyping, rape, domestic violence, oppression, broken spirits, diminished confidence. A simmering controversy has been brought into public gaze - a new study estimating that 10 million girls have gone “missing” from India’s population since 1985 because of the practice of selectively aborting female fetuses. TamilNadu's sex ratio has dropped (number of women to men) by 20% in the last 5 years. Only 52% of India's women are educated. 73% of Indian girls die at birth!!! 73%!!!!! 37% of India's women have a Higher Secondary education. So what exactly are we celebrating today?
I am proud of the women who have survived these statistics and have even gone beyond. I am proud of the women who have surpassed hurdles and achieved great things. I am proud of the woman who has let her voice be heard and lived her dreams. I am proud. But lets not ignore the statistics above.. 'cos those are not just numbers. They are a startling image of the way this country treats its women. So if you want to pick just one day in a year to tell me I'm special, come closer.. I have a particular finger I'd like to show you.
Labels: india, statistics, women's day
posted by Empty Space at 3:57 PM
12 Comments:
Well, Thats an interesting forward.
But we do celebrate other days like "Father's Day", "Mother's Day", "Children's Day", etc..
I am sure u can come up with statistics similar to the one above for each of the days. Why do we celebrate them?
India has been "independent" since 59 years. Are we in the true sense independent? We still have poverty, unemployment,etc.. Then why are we celebrating the Independence Day?
Conditions of women in rural india are still not good as pointed out by statistics, but they are improving.Its the improvement that is being celebrated.. Not anything else.
the statistics are disturbing and i must admit that I am ignorant of them as well.in fact i had gone to an adoption centre to register as a single parent and sad to say but yes there are childless couples that insist on adopting a boy only. of course i cannot adopt a girl as a single parent but by any luck:-) if i did married I hope that we will be able to adopt a girl. Well that’s a long shot…. Maybe we need to tell ourselves to start doing something to set things right. We can. We just need to start moving.
Samurai dexter.. I acknowledge what ure saying.. but i refure to be thankful for minor improvements cos its makes us complacent. This is an urgent matter that needs to be dealt with NOW.. before the numbers grow each year. That was my point.
Unicorn5203.. ure right.. we need to start moving! r u moving yet?!?! :)
well in a way,yes.once i have taken up my new job i intend to apply for a course for councelling at the adoption centre.of course there are exams and interviews before you can even do the course.if you get thru then you become a part time counceller.the course is expensive but i think i should be able to manage that.had been saving up for another motorcycle.i decided that the course is a better way to use the money.thats my first step.lets see what happens.
Yup... BTW..u are right about the lady DJ thing...
The improvements are there but as you say they are MINOR...
Being Indians its our tendency to blow our own trumpet with 1000W Dolby speakers attached..
But what exactly can we do to change these statistics?
samurai dexter-to change the statistics is actually quite simple- i would say get up and do something that is within your capacity and capability.we all tend to look at what others are doing and follow...who knows maybe when you start to do something others around you will follow...you need at 1 to make a 99 add up to a 100.
IWD marks the day 146 women lost their lives in a garment factory fire in NY, 1911. in india, the day became prominent after HLL realized it made great business sense. today, its not really a celebration of women anymore; its more a celebration of their spending power.
it doesn't really make much sense to me to fight for the emancipation of women in india as an isolated cause. bring in overall economic development and everything will gradually start falling into place. 'them' and 'us' doesn't really help; it does more harm than good.
good post & keep writing!
ram..
emancipation of women has to be of some priority bcos how can we dream of overall development without considering the upliftment of everyone? we need to include every single pperson who has been lef behind and ignored... and who has been ignored more then women? that's all im saying.. dont give women more opportunities than others.. just give them the same!
hey..
i agree with u entirely. i'm completely with u on the cause; all people should be equal - no bars. what i don't agree on is the means. but how can i when i don't even know your means? its simple. anything that you do specifically to uplift women (or any particular class of people), by definition cannot work.
you cannot fight discrimination with reverse discrimination. it might make things seem better in the short term, but it cannot work in the long term. its like saving a fish from a polluted ocean by keeping him in a fish bowl. how long can you keep him in a bowl? what if you die? and what about all the other fish? the correct solution is to clean the ocean.
when my dad was 25 and struggling to make ends meet, all my mother did was cook. he was the supreme authority. he made all the decisions. she was, by today's standards, very oppressed. today she's a formidable real estate investor. she doesn't need dad's permission to do what she wants. why? because my dad changed? absolutely not; he's just the same. the transformation gradually came about when there were far too many opportunities out there to grow from and he didn't have enough time to grab all of them.
the bane of rural india is that there's no work to do. villagers have nothing to do 9 out of 12 months. rural industries have no incentive to offer the same wages to men and women when the supply of labour far exceeds the demand. 40 years of a closed economy allowed this stagnation. the only solution is an open economy, free of restrictions of any kind, free to grow at will.
today things are improving, but just not fast enough. how do we make it faster? staying back in the country instead of running away to some foreign land is one way. fighting state discrimination of any kind is another. fight farm subsidies, fight price control, fight maternity benefits, fight the recent reservation bill...
fight these forms of state discrimination, not the social discrimination that result from them. i know its not easy to see the correlation, which is why politics still survives... and thrives.
ram-though i do agree with what you have explained in detail i feel that there is one detail missed out and that is education.awareness is what is required for any sort of change to happen.the reason why a villager is idle for 9 months out of 12 is because he/she is not aware/educated enough to know that there are other opportunities.and more so with the women because we,men, believe that they belong in the kitchen.yes that is changing but its nowhere in proportion to the size and growth of our population.politics thrives on the lack of education/awareness.
unicorn5203...
there *aren't* enough other opportunities. villagers are very resourceful people, far more than you imagine. they do so much more with what opportunities they have than you or i can ever manage. my grandfather was a poor landless laborer and many of my relatives still live there. we visit them every year, so i know.
there are many NGO's out there that visit a few of our country's 600,000 villages and try to build self-help opportunities for them. these are great initiatives and i've contributed to some of them too, but only as long as they dont target a specific section of people. any such initiative needs to be a free-for-all. the amul india movement is a great example. it just so happens that women make up the vast majority of this movement; its not an orchestrated result. add artificial barriers to any initiative and you simply cannot sustain it.
as far as education/awareness go, what do you mean by awareness? awareness that women are equal? how do u define equal? and what kind of scientific basis does that come from? none at all; its a moral stand. a hundred years ago you didn't see women in literature or science even in the western world. why not? because the viewpoint was different then. why did it change? because people realized it was wrong? no. even women didn't think it was wrong then. they looked down upon the few women that were into science as 'unladylike'.
today's world has enough economic activity that hands are in short supply. household chores take less and less time. less and less jobs require physical labor compared to a century ago. more women have hence started entering industry. moral standpoints have changed. equality in everything is the new mantra, and i subscribe to it. you cannot go and ask people in the village to subscribe to it too; u need to give them a reason to. that reason will come automatically with increased economic activity and growth.
none of what i've said above justifies female infanticide. but it makes perfect sense for the people who do it, which is why they do it. girls require dowry, and they go away some day. abolish infanticide! already done, people still do it hidden from view. abolish dowry! already done, but there are people willing to pay, so there will always be takers. teach villagers that women are equal! can u tell them that their girls are not going to go away, or that they don't need to pay dowry? who are you fooling? empower women by bringing them together and helping them make a living and showing these men what women can do! the men will always think they could do better if they were given the same opportunity; little that's gonna help. and it doesn't solve female infanticide. it does help a few women become self-sufficient so they can escape from the harassment of their in-laws, but such women need constant protection and always live in fear.
so what is the solution? i've already said it. remove barriers to economic growth, open up the economy. remove state discrimination. more women will automatically enter the country's workforce when there are more jobs than hands to do them. more jobs will automatically be created once the minimum wage law is out the window. no employer will have any reason to discriminate against women once maternity benefits are not made mandatory by the state... and as more women enter the workforce (naturally, mind you, not because of reverse discrimination), lesser will be the cases of dowry and discrimination. and along with this, as people prosper, female infanticide will be unheard of.
ram-once again i agree with your opinion.but how do you know all these details?would you agree if i said that its because you are aware of them?when you learn something you are simply becaming aware of it.i see it as simple as that.but these awareness do not only happen on its own.hence we have schools and colleges and other educational institutions.what i feel is that education is the basis of our values.iam not just talking about degrees and post graduate degrees alone.tell me,would you go out and join a mob yelling slogans about religious differences and burn whatever you see?of course not.you are an educated man,hence you are aware of the choice of whats right and wrong.you are aware of what needs to be done to improve the lives of the people around you and yourself.you are not born with this.you learn.you become aware.
the villagers need to be aware of what will make their lives more fullfilling.yes they are very resourceful.my grandfather was a famer.but had he been aware of the changes that had been happening in the world of agriculture iam sure he would not had a quarter of his land as unproductive.we have female infanticide because we are do not provide enough quality opportunities for women.we are to blame for that.we have instilled that idea that a girl child is a burden and not a joy.we have instilled the idea that a son is an asset.
yes,women are treated poorly,they are abused,beaten and worse.and they live in fear.why?because they do not know what else they can do.i refuse to accept that all women in their hearts give up so easy.there will be some who want to fight but they dont know how.
the ones who do fight it out are aware of their rights,the right to be treated with dignity,the right to be free.
as more women are educated and aware,they will choice whats best,be it a job at an it company or become the prime minister of this country or any other.
i just believe that the answer should be at a micro level keeping in mind the effects that will happen at a macro level.
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