"Women Empowerment - Indian Perspectives"

“All agree in recognizing the fact that females exist in the human species. Today, as always, they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger. If today femininity no longer exists, then it never existed. But does the word Woman, then, have no specific content? ”
- Simone de Beauvoir

Women Empowerment has been the epicentre of social development in our country for almost a decade now. Ever since we woke into the dawn of independence, bringing women at par with men has been a serious concern for the civil society. Today, with globalisation and technological explosions in the scene, it is believed that the situation is ripe for women to extract maximum advantage out of their opportunities. The recognition of Women’s rights by the Constitution, birth control campaigns, criminalisation of sex selective abortions, improvements in the sphere of education with respect to girl children etc have been pointed out to be conducive to the Women Empowerment movement.
While all this remains, the question is, why women don’t feel internally empowered and secure enough to go out and chase their dreams. It can be seen that women constantly live under a fear of being attacked. While in men the fear is of being robbed or fatally injured, in women the concern is of being sexually assaulted. Unless she feels sure that she can walk on the streets without the fear of being violated, she cannot be empowered. All external instrumentalities of empowerment will fail miserably if the internal empowerment does not happen. The external opportunities designed to bring the fair sex to the forefront of developmental activities are fruitless if they do not germinate a sense of internal liberation within the woman.
This presentation attempts to chronicle the socio political and moral connotations that exist in the collective conscience of the society which bring into existence the sense of insecurity in women and lower the definition of the term ‘Woman’ to that of a mere vagina or a womb.

Analysis of the root cause of this fear in women will be done under the following two main heads:

• Women and the concept of “Virginity”

• The institution of marriage and its decisive nature in determining the social status of a woman


1. Women and Virginity – Societal norms and their effect on women

The primary concern of majority women seems to orbit around their virginity or what the society construes to be their bodily purity. The concept of virginity in the context of the Indian society is about having an intact hymen and not indulging in sexual intercourse before a woman is legally and rightfully married off. The celibate woman is expected to be a virgin. This image of woman has been maintained since times immemorial and is continued to remain so even today.
In such a scenario, it is forced upon every woman to see to it that she remains a virgin in the eyes of the immediate society around her, so that she can lead a socially acceptable life. The society polices her in every move and keeps a ceaseless vigil over her activities. It looks for instances which can be used against her to label her as a vamp.
In this sort of an environment, if at all the woman falls prey to any kind of sexual abuse or assault, the society will look down on her and she will become an untouchable, unacceptable being. She will lose her identity and dignity and will be shunned by the people around her even though the unfortunate incident which took place was not due to her fault.
This fear of being shunned by the society creates an insecure feeling in the mind of every woman. This makes her think twice before she decides to get out of her house. She deliberates on how she will be able to get back home and by what time she will be able to return. All such calculations are made with respect to a careful analysis of the possibility of being attacked by some random pervert on the streets. Such thoughts hold back women from going out and doing the things they love or even doing their hard earned jobs.
When this mental conflict is correlated to the realm of women empowerment, it can be rightfully concluded that unless women feel bold enough to walk out of their homes and be sure to be able to return without being harmed, they will hesitate to involve in productive activities even if they are educated or have been provided with various opportunities to develop their potentials. Apart from having contempt for victims of sexual assault, the issue of female reproductive and sexual autonomy lie at the core of passionately held ideological, religious and cultural notions of female gender identity. Even when there is no direct State involvement, governments have frequently been complicit in abuses against women that are carried out in the name of tradition, culture or religion by purposefully turning a blind eye towards them. Societies in all regions of the world create social arrangements to order interaction among members of the community; these arrangements almost always include distinct gender roles. The failure to ensure that women remain within the boundaries of their socially defined sexual roles is widely considered to tarnish not only the woman’s reputation but also her family’s or even her entire community’s honour. Thus, women, not men who engage in the so called “immodest” behaviour are attacked by the society. The international community has also been timid about condemning abuses cloaked in terms of cultural, traditional or religious imperatives, especially when they affect the sensitive domain of female sexuality. In doing so, governments have failed to uphold the principle of universality of Human Rights. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights declared- “While the significance of national and regional particularities and various cultural and regardless backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of the States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems to promote and protect all Human Rights and fundamental freedoms.” Further, cultural defences for violation of women’s freedom and rights in the context of female sexuality also warrant careful scrutiny as they often don’t reflect a true concern for public or social order and are exploited by people with vested interests .

This is where we spot the major flaw of the women empowerment movements of the modern day.
These notions of virginity and their decisive role in determining the social status of a woman affect empowerment adversely.



2. Women and the institution of marriage

The institution of marriage is given paramount importance in the social life on India. Polygamy has been prohibited by law and couples are expected to stick on to the marriage and go together for a lifetime. The scene is changing now to a limited extent with the onset of liberal views on individual freedoms and cohabitation without a legal marriage is being accepted to a large extent. But looking at the larger picture, it is seen that the family is treated as the nucleus of civilization even today and thus, marriages become important.
As observed in The Second Sex , marriage is the destiny traditionally offered to women by the society. The celibate woman is defined and explained with respect to marriage - whether she was married, plans to get married, is married or rebellious about marriage.
Every human existence involves transcendence and immanence at the same time; to go forward, each existence must be maintained, for it to expand towards t the future, it must integrate the past and while intercommunicating with others, it should find self-confirmation. These two elements- maintenance and progression- are implied in any living activity and for the man, marriage permits precisely a happy synthesis of the two. In his occupation and his political life he encounters change and progress, he senses his extension through time and the universe; and when he is tired of such roaming he gets himself a home and settles down and has an anchorage in the world. But, the woman has no other job than to maintain and provide for everyday life in an orderly way. She perpetuates the species without change; she ensures the even rhythm of the days and continuity of the home, seeing to it that the doors are locked. But she is allowed no direct influence upon the future nor upon the world. She reaches out beyond herself towards the social group only through her husband as intermediary.
Even though times have changed, this is the basic situation of a woman in almost every marriage. Even if she is employed, she has to adjust her prospects in tandem with the likes of her husband and extended family. She has to give birth within a considerable time period after marriage to gain the love of her in-laws. At the same time, the man has no such restraints on his personal liberty even when he is equally part of the marriage.
Further, the woman is held so tight by the pathological grip of moral beliefs and conjugal obligations that she has to think many times before she decides to walk out of a marriage which of course is not the case with a man. She often loses her right to sexual and reproductive freedom and is made to stick onto the marriage despite all these facts by the society around.
This kind of predominance of the institution of marriage also creates a sense of insecurity in women whereby they hesitate to venture into challenging sectors of work and art. Marriage is considered as an inevitable event in the life of a woman and the people around make it almost impossible for her to live by herself.
This tendency of the woman to give up her identity to maintain her marriage eventually dispenses off her inner strength and her urge to grow beyond her limitations.
While such deep rooted concerns continue to breed inside the mind of women, their empowerment is not possible regardless of how much opportunity they are provided with.


Suggested remedies
Coming to the possible suggestive remedies that can be put forth to correct the internal insecurities faced by women, it is felt that a considerable quantum of difference can be brought about through:
• Strengthening the sphere of education with respect to women and instilling in them awareness about their rights and the willingness to fight against violations of the feminine self

• Ensuring that women become economically independent

• Initiating a change in attitude of the male society around

Empowerment essentially means to equip or supply with ability. Therefore, it does not concern itself with external factors alone; rather it is about the internal liberation of an individual. Empowerment should enable a person to form independent views on various aspects of life and also stand strong and express them without inhibitions. For the women empowerment movements to bear fruit, it has to be ensured that women are empowered from within. They have to realise that they have a self, an identity and worth. They too are human resources who have social responsibilities to fulfil and also take active part in turning the wheels of civilization and democracy. Only if this realisation becomes strong in women and a social environment conducive to the manifestations of such realisations is provided to them, can they be empowered in the real sense of the term.
To start with, education has the most important role to play in shaping up a woman of strong beliefs and awareness. Education should seek to generate a sense of individuality in a woman and help her to break free from the yolks of conventional conditionings. She should be let free to choose her field of work and she should be taught not to give up herself for the selfish and egoistic demands of someone else. While saying this, there intends to be not the slightest hint that women should be made to become self-centred and arrogant (as the modern day Feminists think they should be). But nonetheless, women should be made aware of their rights.
There exists a sense of shame in women which holds them back from admitting the occurrence of a sexual assault or any other incident of the same nature. This sense of shame has to be converted into a sense of rebellious stubbornness through education. There is absolutely no need to die in shame in such cases, rather, women should come up and fight against the perpetuators of their violation.
Moreover, education should mould a woman to understand that nobody has a right over her body no matter at what time or place she is and with whom she is. It is only such realisations that can help women overcome their mental blocks and insecurities. A woman’s life is a constant struggle to find herself as well as to fit into the societal norms of modesty, and in it, most of the times, she is made to drown herself and live according to the unwritten but compelling dictates of the immediate society around, including her family. Only when she is given the autonomy to be herself from within will the external instrumentalities of empowerment offered to her find meaning.
The aspect of economic independence also plays a decisive role in determining a woman’s existence and her options. If she is economically self-reliant, she can make her own decisions with regard to her travelling, lodging, work etc. She can opt to live in a much more liberal fashion and also have a say in deciding matters in the family. Moreover, she will not have to hold on to an unhappy marriage if she has the means to sustain herself and maintain her dependants even if she breaks off from the wedlock. The absence of an alternative source of income often becomes the reason behind women sticking onto marriages and succumbing to the dictates of the man. Thus, economic independence is a great relief and violation of women’s freedoms can be antidoted with it to a large extent.
The most important and difficult aspect which hinders the process of women empowerment is the attitude of the male community around. Women have always been viewed as a commodity for sexual use by man and even today, remnants of that archetype exists in the collective conscience of the male society. They are today the most dreaded beings as we see an indiscriminate increase in the number of sexual crimes against women in the most heinous forms. Even within the family, instances of sexual abuse and incest are on the rise. With such happenings all around, the woman is made to feel all the more insecure and she has begun to feel that nothing can actually give her concrete protection from sexual abuses. This fear hinders her intellectual digestion and creates blocks which form a hard cyst around her sense of freedom.

These issues all relate to the mental frame of women and are inextricably intertwined with their sense of empowerment. Unless a woman is made to feel that she is secure and can assert herself without the fear of being isolated, she cannot be empowered. Legal and political safeguards come only at the next level of empowerment. First of all, these issues should be looked into and then, there should be a synthesis of the external and internal forces to bring about an effective empowerment model.

The discussion here was with respect to the large majority of the Indian women and their mental frame in the context of the morality of the Indian society. The situation is different in the western world as their concept of virginity and marriages are far liberal and they give importance to individual choices above the creation of a community life. Even in India, the situation changes in the case of the elite upper class women who can afford luxuries and don’t often heed to the opinions of the society around them. But again, the large majority of womenfolk in the country are still ignorant of their rights and live by the society’s concept of how they should live.
To empower a woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man and not to deny them to her. It is to let her have her independent existence.
Woman must not be made to accept, she must be made to challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must revere that woman in her which struggles for expression.

Sugar Sticks!

All I want is to hold onto that timid little finger,
Bite onto those neatly cut white sugar cubes that crown your fingers,
Play with that slender ring finger,
Fight with that short fat thumb,
Kiss the insides of your palms,
Smudge red love on your cotton white wrists,
Nuzzle those curvy round knuckles with the tip of my nose,
Try constantly to open your closed fists,
Keep counting your fingers as though I’d never figure how many you have,
All I want to do is keep pulling your palms to my belly,
And remain in my sleep safe inside the embrace!

A Mother Is Born

My belly ached to empty itself,
As I lay on the stained white cloth
Under the damp ceiling of the hospital room.
Hair in a mess,
Wide stretched legs,
Sweaty I lay crushing the bedcloth under my palms.

At every killing push of pain
Your face flashed before my eyes,
Those rainy nights,
Our playful days,
Those moments of slimy wild thrills,
The love that brimmed in every touch,
The clumsy warmth of every breath.

Scared I lay on the bed,
On the urine stained white cloth,
Tired of crying to myself,
My growling belly ready to burst,
My legs wet of bleeding life.

At the last push of frightening hurt,
My insides emptied onto the floor,
The drops of love you wet me with
On those rainy July nights!

My puffy eyes closed into sleep,
My body shaken by the strain,
Mind completely at peace,
I lay content in a blissful sleep.
You gave birth to the mother in me,
And I kept the word I gave you,
To go through hell or pricking pain
Just to see a smiling you!

White Funeral

Let us make a coffin,
Neatly painted in snow white,
With Lilly buds all over,
Let us engrave my name onto it
With your's at the end,
Let me place into it all that was left unsaid,
Every single breath,
Moments of magic,
All the long pauses,
The deep ocean of our silence,
Utterances in between the muteness,
The plucked jasmine petals.
Join me in the funeral
Of what we watered all these years,
Lets uproot our plant
And destroy all its seeds,
Together lets pray
That our restlessness finds rest in our coffin of eternal silence!

Scarred White

My lonely moon,
I am here
Sitting by my open window,
Waiting for you to peep through foggy clouds,
Waiting to see my scars reflect in your eyes.
I know you have shiny stars resting on your chest,
I know you have icy winds to thrill you,
Dancing bellies of the night birds to groove with,
You have beautiful lotus petals down in the waters
Looking expectantly to touch you.
You have other belles sitting by open windows whom you love looking at.
But its only me who writes about you,
Its only me who knows you are feeble,
Only I know that you feel insecure about your deep scars,
I know it all even if you never told me.
That dosent make you mine, I know
But even then,
Peep through,
Just once,
Before the sun overpowers your charms,
Peep through at me
For that will give me a whole night's peace!

The Witch Within

As I stood drenching my skin in the dark night showers,
The black rain smudged onto my pores
Melting the molten khol in my eyes,
Causing it to drip down like fluid black metal from my eye ores,
Like a dynamite the black rain made explosions in my inner mines,
The burning coal and molten gold within me pushed their way out,
Through my open belly button they spilled out, mingling with the rain drops.
Reducing me to a smoky mass of crumbling metals,
I shed my mortal skins,
My skin turned pitch black and I transformed myself into a Black Witch
Exorcising disturbed creatures and calling out to sleeping spirits,
I wandered like the mistress of darkness,
The queen of mystery,
Searching for myself in every thunderbird's flutter,
Spitting fire on every hissing python,
Kissing hard on every grave I met,
Praying to live on forever in this bubble of freedom
Hoping never to put on my mortal skins again!

The thing people call "Love"

“Love is a leader. In order to be love’s follower, you have to be chosen by love,” says Khalil Gibran.
On glancing around me, I see a lot of people who claim to be in love and the emotion has become so overrated that anything and everything between two people is named love these days. If the so called thing that happens between two people is love, then why is it that relationships don’t last or that marriages which claim to be built upon foundations of love fall down miserably?
Even though there may be exceptions, according to my observations and acumen so far, an average(most commonly seen kind of) romantic relationship in today’s scene can be described as follows:
• When two people meet (even though the scene in the contemporary world includes homosexuals, here my reference is only to the heterosexual pairs) and they think they are curious about each other, then there is a misbelief that it is love.
• The next thing is that they get into a romantic relationship and then of course there is the usual night talks on the phone, the 24 hours non-stop text messages, make out sessions which are much looked forward to and then the final culmination- sex.
• After the sex, things change in most relationships, the pair starts to feel bored, the talks get monotonous, and as days go by there is nothing much that excites the both of them in each other.
• When the relation reaches this stage of depression, either of them decides to dump the other or they decide to part gracefully.
• If not that, they have a huge fight and they break up. Later on, the guy goes around describing the girl and her assets or the girl goes around lecturing about why guys should not be trusted.
Now, if we analyse this hypothesis, we see that all that the both of them needed was sex. If that was the case, why didn’t they just sleep together in the first stage itself and part?
When it comes to love, our society seems to be a complicated and disoriented lot. The underlying fact is that every individual wants to be on his own and wishes to think for himself. When a relationship happens, people do not look beyond the possibilities of the physicality between the two of them. Any individual cannot survive with someone to whom he cannot connect on the intellectual level. Be it a mediocre person or a snob or an intellectual one- every individual wants to talk out his mind to his partner and be able to coincide on some level with each other’s line of thoughts. Human beings are not sex machines who can be content with sessions of love making alone. Its only when work, brain activity, love and sex come together that a person feels revitalised. Sex alone will not sustain any individual or relationship.
Love becomes an experience only when you get to discover the person each day and when you can be happy about his existence itself. Getting to know a new facet of someone each day and celebrating the existence of such a person will never bore anyone I guess. But to create that kind of a lasting bond, both the man and the woman need to be wise, well-read and of distinct individualities. Sadly tough, in our social scene, people think that knowledge and love are in no way connected.
The commitment phobia that the Indian men have is another thing that adds fuel to the breakage of relationships. Men in general seem scared of commitment and marriages. They can be in a live- in relationship with a woman for more than 10 years but cant marry her. If the relation can go on for a long time, why hesitate to give it a name? It could be that the stigma that lingers over divorce and marriages in the Indian minds is one reason why people do not wish to get into nuptial knots.
Sex is a physical need, but it has got nothing to do with love. If sex is needed, we should learn to get it and move on without creating dramatic instances by calling it love. Every individual is in search of love. But the irony is that everyone seems to be in love as well. Love is something that will never be found in its entirety (at least thats what I believe!). Love keeps hopes alive and hopes keep the world moving. But again, in most man woman relationships, there definitely is no love. So we should invent some new word that can be used to replace “love” in such cases. “Lust” could be a substitute but again people don’t like it when their true intentions are spilled out. We always want to glorify our motives and use strong words like “love” and “commitment” so that we look, sound and seem civilised(even though civilization has not even looked our way)!