Recently there had been lot of debates and fuss about women's reservation bill in India and we had quite a few oppositions to it and I came across one of the most interesting comment made by a politician :
"If the Women's Reservation Bill would be passed in its present form, it would help women belonging to the families of industrialists and bureaucrats, who were of the kind youths would want to whistle at."
Those who were/are in favor of the bill said that it is a step forward towards emancipation of the women. All these comments in for/against made me thinking. I am not a feminist but am truly in favor of equal rights for man/woman..in fact I believe that every living being in this world should be treated equally irrespective of color, creed, gender, nationality etc. Will the bill really help in emancipation of women? We are in the 21st century and are we really emancipated? Even today, women are looked down upon and we have cases of female infanticide, hear/see violence against women every other day. Woman across all sections of the society are victims of abuse, either directly or indirectly. Yeah violence doesn't mean physical one, I believe that mental torture is the biggest violence and the most cruel one.With gradual healing, signs of physical abuse can be healed but what about the mental ones. It might take years to become alright and yet a person might not be. What an irony !! In India, we pray to goddess for peace, prosperity and power and yet we abuse the female form. My family has always treated me as an equal and they have never considered me less than anybody and have fulfilled all my wishes/demands and I must say that I am lucky in that. But yet I have been a victim myself, though indirectly and sometimes it has taken a toll on my self-esteem and pride but lucky me that I have always overcome them and have come out of them in flying colors. The funny part is that it's not my family but outsiders who have tried to make me understand that am a gal and I should behave/act in a certain way.A couple of funny incidences which comes to my mind happened during my engineering days. One of them happened in my 1st year, a senior guy became my so called elder brother and gave me lectures on how should I study and why must I not go out of the hostel in the evenings and blah blah. Come to think of it, the guy who was lecturing me himself used to make passes at gals. Oh! yeah,the funny part which I am facing now. My family is searching groom for me and one of the questions/conditions,whatever that is being put forth before me is that I should quit my job after marriage to look after the family. Sometimes I laugh at these comments but yeah it makes me wonder that I spent 20 years of my life in school and college to get the best of education and then it took me around 10 years to reach the position where I am and how can somebody ask me to quit it in a jiffy? How can somebody else take decision on my behalf? Am I not mature enough to take my own decision on how best I can handle my professional and personal life? Well,not all people are like that but yeah majority of them are. Will increasing the number of women in parliament/legislative assemblies help in reducing all these issues? Yeah agreed more women participation means more voices will be raised to discuss or highlight the plight of women but will it help in resolving /reducing them? I am being optimistic and do hope and sincerely pray that this bill starts a silent revolution.
However, I believe that the icing in the cake will be a positive change in the mentality of the people and they started looking upon the women folk as equals and not as some kind of object.
