By NIMMI RAGHUNATHAN
March 8 is International Women’s Day. On this day 20 years ago, the historic Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was signed by 189 governments to set the agenda for realizing women’s rights. This year’s theme declared by the United Nations “Empowering Women - Empowering Humanity: Picture It!” envisions a world where every woman has the right to seek education, get an income, get involved in politics and live free from violence and discrimination. Every woman hopes on behalf of,
March 8 is International Women’s Day. On this day 20 years ago, the historic Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was signed by 189 governments to set the agenda for realizing women’s rights. This year’s theme declared by the United Nations “Empowering Women - Empowering Humanity: Picture It!” envisions a world where every woman has the right to seek education, get an income, get involved in politics and live free from violence and discrimination. Every woman hopes on behalf of,
and for her entire gender, that each forthcoming year will be better Contd. from A1 than the year that was. As Indian-Americans we know the shame of India being viewed as the new rape capital of the world, with one rape happening every 30 minutes, according to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. No day goes by without a horrific headline grabbing report – a child, a gang of predators, “eve teasing” the unique euphemism for sexual molestation or, harassment of the kind environmentalist R.K.Pachauri is being accused of meting out. His case, sickening as it is, points toward the new hope that women now are growing in confidence to take legal action instead of quietly succumbing to people in places of power and influence. Living free from violence or the threat of it is a human right. But worldwide, brute male power has triumphed either through direct violence or the enforcement of antiquated cultural norms and, thinking which has frozen in time. In the world of Google, a modern tech giant, only 17% of the workforce is constituted of women. A scandal in itself, the problem may go farther back. A just released paper by researchers from England and Israel for the National Bureau of Economic Research says women in engineering jobs are fewer in number, as even when they are in school teachers create lesser expectations from girls, suggesting they are less capable in math and science. It is no wonder then, women in science and engineering jobs report of not being treated equally: they face the same schoolboys who have grown up with a sense of entitlement. Remember Lawrence Summers, the then president of Harvard, when he questioned the “intrinsic aptitude” of women for top-level math and science? That was as late as 2005.
Weakening the position of the woman is as old as society itself.
A commonly told story is of male religious leaders who travel on planes with a makeshift curtain drawn around where they sit, so they do not have to deal with the air stewardess passing by on the aisles. Now whether the man does not want to see them or he fears the women seeing him, is not particularly clear. But this is for sure: the glance of a woman is not to be tolerated as she is the temptress, the incarnate of things evil who could lead godly men on the path of destruction.
This story becomes important in the face of whole communities being shaped by what the religious and cultural leaders believe in. Politicians feed off this – from the Rand Pauls to the Sadhvis - till it actually reaches the place of public discourse instead of being tossed into the nearest garbage bin of retrogressive ideas. Enlightened or not, First world or Third world, the conception of who and what a woman is, is routinely predetermined, often to her disadvantage. It is something that can only be changed with progressive education.
Yes, for women but also men.
The unforgettable question that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi posed in a public speech is relevant to every society: “I want to ask every mother and father, you ask your daughters, ‘Where are you going, who are you going with?’ But do you ever ask your sons these questions? After all, those who rape are also someone’s son.”
Indeed. It was a call to shift attitudes, to place responsibility where it belongs.
The UN says the International Women’s Day is a time to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.
So we celebrate Malala who became a hero because the men in her society did not want women to have an education. But those gun toting barbarians too lacked the relevant education to be a part of civilized society.
Everything else aside, just at the pragmatic level alone, an equitable society at the economic level can be created only if the other half of humanity is empowered. Increasing the presence of women in a nation’s labor force has shown a proportionate drop in poverty levels. A woman with an income means she is not victim to the cycle of child marriage, early pregnancies and ill health that strains a nation’s services. And the list goes on….
Much has happened since America gave its women the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Still, attitudes need to shift. We speak of Indira Nooyi as the woman CEO and don’t refer to Warren Buffet as the male billionaire. We continue to deal with unequal pay for women, as actress Patricia Arquette pointed out in her Academy Award winning speech. And on an everyday basis we tolerate jokes that equate blonde women as dumb and, leer with our sons and daughters at the suffocating and demeaning Bollywood ‘item number.’
It’s about time to make a choice to reset.
************
On March 8, ‘India’s Daughter’ a BBC documentary by filmmaker Leslee Udwin releases. Among other things, she talks to one of the perpetrators of the crime against Jyoti Singh, or ‘Nirbhaya’ on December 16, 2012, in Delhi. Watch his unrepentant responses, the terrible defense lawyers who seemed to have been thawed out from the dinosaur age, and understand how women are continued to be viewed today. If your stomach doesn’t turn, consider yourself in need of help too.
Weakening the position of the woman is as old as society itself.
A commonly told story is of male religious leaders who travel on planes with a makeshift curtain drawn around where they sit, so they do not have to deal with the air stewardess passing by on the aisles. Now whether the man does not want to see them or he fears the women seeing him, is not particularly clear. But this is for sure: the glance of a woman is not to be tolerated as she is the temptress, the incarnate of things evil who could lead godly men on the path of destruction.
This story becomes important in the face of whole communities being shaped by what the religious and cultural leaders believe in. Politicians feed off this – from the Rand Pauls to the Sadhvis - till it actually reaches the place of public discourse instead of being tossed into the nearest garbage bin of retrogressive ideas. Enlightened or not, First world or Third world, the conception of who and what a woman is, is routinely predetermined, often to her disadvantage. It is something that can only be changed with progressive education.
Yes, for women but also men.
The unforgettable question that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi posed in a public speech is relevant to every society: “I want to ask every mother and father, you ask your daughters, ‘Where are you going, who are you going with?’ But do you ever ask your sons these questions? After all, those who rape are also someone’s son.”
Indeed. It was a call to shift attitudes, to place responsibility where it belongs.
The UN says the International Women’s Day is a time to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.
So we celebrate Malala who became a hero because the men in her society did not want women to have an education. But those gun toting barbarians too lacked the relevant education to be a part of civilized society.
Everything else aside, just at the pragmatic level alone, an equitable society at the economic level can be created only if the other half of humanity is empowered. Increasing the presence of women in a nation’s labor force has shown a proportionate drop in poverty levels. A woman with an income means she is not victim to the cycle of child marriage, early pregnancies and ill health that strains a nation’s services. And the list goes on….
Much has happened since America gave its women the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Still, attitudes need to shift. We speak of Indira Nooyi as the woman CEO and don’t refer to Warren Buffet as the male billionaire. We continue to deal with unequal pay for women, as actress Patricia Arquette pointed out in her Academy Award winning speech. And on an everyday basis we tolerate jokes that equate blonde women as dumb and, leer with our sons and daughters at the suffocating and demeaning Bollywood ‘item number.’
It’s about time to make a choice to reset.
************
On March 8, ‘India’s Daughter’ a BBC documentary by filmmaker Leslee Udwin releases. Among other things, she talks to one of the perpetrators of the crime against Jyoti Singh, or ‘Nirbhaya’ on December 16, 2012, in Delhi. Watch his unrepentant responses, the terrible defense lawyers who seemed to have been thawed out from the dinosaur age, and understand how women are continued to be viewed today. If your stomach doesn’t turn, consider yourself in need of help too.