International women’s day.

International women’s day.

Women bear almost all responsibility for meeting basic needs of the family, yet are systematically denied the resources, information and freedom of action they need to fulfill this responsibility. Vast majority of women both in India and the world are poor, illiterate, have not access to health. Safety is other major concern for them and they are constantly exposed to the threat of violence both at the home and outside. On the International Women’s Day, we need not only to change our mindset towards women but should ensure they are not deprived of their basic rights or subjected to any kind of torture, otherwise complete empowerment of women in our country would be a far cry.

Education, health, safety keys to empowerment of Indian women

`Yatra nariyastu pujyante, ramante tatra devta’ ( The God exists where women are worshipped). This adage has become a passé, even as Indian women have made great stride conquering all bastions, hitherto dominated by men. However, on its flip side, notwithstanding Indian women reaching great heights, the fact is a majority of them in our society continue to lead a life, incompatible to human dignity.

The glaring and brutal gang rapes of women reported from various parts of the country, gender discrimination and growing incidents of domestic violence against them stemming out of dowry, rape, harassment and an assortment of others make a telling commentary on the plight of Indian women today.

Women want to be treated as equals so much so that if a woman rises to the top of her field it should be a commonplace occurrence that draws nothing more than a raised eyebrow at the gender. This can only happen if there is a channelized route for the empowerment of women.

Thus it is no real surprise that women empowerment in India is a hotly discussed topic with no real solution looming in the horizon except to doubly redouble our efforts and continue to target the sources of all the violence and ill-will towards women.

The crimes against women fly directly against orchestrating women empowerment in India. A report on the crimes against women by the National Crime Records Bureau comes up with some alarming statistics with number of cases of rapes, torture, molestation, sexual harassment increasing every year.

To understand what it is that drives such crimes against women is an essay on its own, if not a PhD thesis. There are a vast number of drivers for such behaviour in the Indian citizenry, but there are some acute reasons that such behaviour continues despite the apparent movement towards civilisation.

Challenges

There are several challenges like their education, health and safety, poverty that are currently plaguing the issues of women’s rights in India. While a lot of these are redundant and quite basic issues faced across the country, these are contributory causes to the overarching status of women in India. Targeting these issues will directly benefit the empowerment of women in India.

Though the Government of India has taken several initiatives to arrest ills plaguing Indian women, there are still quite a few areas where women empowerment in India is largely lacking.

To truly understand what is women empowerment, there needs to be a sea-change in the mind-set of the people in the country. Not just the women themselves, but the men have to wake up to a world that is moving towards equality and equity. It is better that this is embraced earlier rather than later, for our own good.