Empower the women, Listen to their voices

Empower the equality

No wonder India witnessed many struggles pre- and post- independence which helped in shaping the country what we see today. However, we fail to recognize the contributions made by women and tried to depress it to make sure that man bastions remain in limelight. To name few eminent personalities right from the pre-independence era like Rani Lakshmi Bai, the Queen of Jhansi, Begum Hazrat Mahal, the co-ruler of Awadh and the Begums of Bhopal who led the Indian Rebellion of 1857 to modern day personalities from different walks of life like Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, Lata Mangeskar, Kiran Bedi, P T Usha and many others who helped in shaping in Indian economy.

World Women Day, celebrated on 08^th March every year is not a day to celebrate one day of enthusiasm and show the praise for the wives, sisters, mothers, colleagues, co-travellers et cetera; it is the day to celebrate their independence with our clean mind. We often hear that women can’t cope up the pressure in all fields of life; so, it is the best if they manage household activities well and help their men grow personally. But are we creating a balanced social life? We are sitting on dynamite where we are witnessing a gradual decay of female-male ratios which have made many villages and towns in India barren. The society has been pursuing the glee hopelessly and the social lives have seen a slow death in those areas.

So, the question arise – how can they grow? Should we put them in a different area or barricade their movement? Or should we not clean our minds? We witness many horror stories like Khap Panchayat allowing killing of girls, Gang Rapes, Eve-Teasing and many more. Everywhere we charge them of behaviors which incite males to molest them or sometimes kill them. But I understand our society requires a deep retrospective thinking on what wrong we have done in the past which have led to creation of this kind of mind sets. Even in our offices, we fail to give equal opportunities to female co-workers with a view that they won’t adjust. Yes, they take time to adjust as they need to balance their work-home life and once it is in shape, they roar back like anything. We have many leading examples like Chanda Kochhar, Kiran Bedi, Swati Piramal, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw et al who have demonstrated their skills and fought in uneven times to come at the place where they belong to. The one thing was common among them – they dared to think and act.

So, the society must encourage the grooming of their girls and for that, education is must. Today, there are many government sponsored programmes for girls but somehow they never reach to 100% of the beneficiaries. A world bank study found that enabling girls to be economically active as boys would boost annual GDP growth in India by 4.4 percentage points. Yet girls continue to be overlooked and underrepresented.

The time has come and we have to select our choice – either accept the status quo where millions of girls continue to be deprived and killed due to our ashamed behavior or support a girl revolution, enabling girls pursue their dreams and empowering them which will help in reducing poverty, fuel prosperity and drive progress.

So, let us take a pledge, a pledge where we must empower them and start listening to their voices. Let us bring equality amongst them. Happy Women Day!