The One Billion Dance celebration on the Valentine’s Day reiterated the need for making the world a safer place for women. But how can this cry for help be turned into a victory dance?
The patriarchal system is often blamed for many of the woes afflicting women. The tragedy seems even greater if you realise that in a patriarchal society most of the times the mothers play a larger role in shaping the character of the boys than men folk.
From the Stone Age to early stages of industrial revolution, men carried a premium as they were more capable of performing the hard physical labour. During the two world wars, women showed that they could shoulder all the responsibilities of men in their absence. Modern education was supposed to tame the brute and transform him into a social animal. He may have turned more social but the animal spirit festers and sometimes turns him into a predator. As technology levels the playing field even further, there will be men who will find it hard to adjust to the new rules of the game. They will continue to use physical violence to assert and try and reclaim their self-proclaimed superiority.
Women can start helping men overcome this prejudice by turning their fight into one against everything and anything that encourages men to treat women as second rate citizens or sex objects. This could be advertisements, calendars, TV shows or movies. Some of the seemingly innocuous dialogues and scenes promote, encourage and reinforce sexual prejudices. Women should not only boycott such movies, TV shows and products of companies making obnoxious ads but also force men in their social circle to do so. If the men do not cooperate they should be boycotted. As mothers and sisters, women should stop perpetrating biases created by marketers, such as blue for boys and pink for girls. They should stop buying games and toys which are gender specific, such as bats for boys and Barbies for girls. The war has to start at the level of the child and the family. It should not be limited to targeting adults and strangers. Women should refuse to try and be equal to men by accepting men set standards such as drinking, smoking and multiple sex partners.
They should stop buying games and toys which are gender specific, such as bats for boys and Barbies for girls.
In the US women have social and legal licence to do anything that men can. But the fact remains that the women are still struggling. The country has failed to produce one women president or vice president despite all the bra burning and claims of being the most advanced society with laws to enforce gender equality. The boys club will laugh at a Governor Sarah Palin, and even a distinguished politician like Hillary Clinton must play second fiddle to first Bill and then Barack. The three countries in the Indian subcontinent and many other Asian countries have had women heads of government. But in India, today the Gandhi matris familias is promoting the son over the more popular and charismatic daughter.
It is a long haul and we should learn from some of the examples in some religions. In Hinduism, goddesses often play a more important role than gods. Parvati completes Shiva. Her incarnations as NavDurga are as or even more feared than Shiva. Women and men have to understand that the two complement each other and are not competitors. Equality does not mean one house or one society having two bosses. It means equal sharing of resources and everyone being heard instead of one party forcing its decisions on the other. There is no enemy here. The George Bush thought process of ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ has to be discarded. The couple has to work like a coalition government. There will still be one boss but a mutually agreed one.
Laws have failed to deter deviants in any field. Making laws is easier than changing mindsets. So the society must take the harder route and initiate the change at the grass root level, at homes. It will ensure that respect for women is genuine and a part of nature rather than a lip service out of fear.
By Ashutosh Misra
