Women empowerment is one of the many pledges a politician makes, it has become a trend over the past decade, but like every other promise, this one goes in vain too.The non-deliverance of their promise is not entirely their fault, society cannot make the politicians the scapegoat for everything that is not right. The lack of women empowerment stems from the mentality of the society.
Women have been empowered, there is no denying that, but only in certain regions and only to a certain extent. Women in the urban region have been participating in the economic sectors of life, but what about the rural region? Sixty percent of India’s population lives in the rural region. What about the women there? Who is going to give them their rights? Forget working privileges, majority of the women are treated worse than the people working in sweatshops what with the measley amount of food and bare minimum levels sanitation and other basic rights. To suppress any sort of protest the women are not even educated out of the fear of them raising their voices and learning that they aren’t meant to only cook and clean. For example, in George Orwell’s 1984, the word freedom is removed from the vocabulary so that the concept becomes unknown to the people. The citizens might feel it in their bones but they won’t be able to act on it because they themselves won’t know what it is. They might not want to follow the rules but they will not know that they can break away from them. Similarly, the women in the rural region are kept in a shell, the concept of empowerment is alien to them, they are made to believe that god made them for the sole purpose of cooking, cleaning and looking after men and their chauvinistic needs.
Then again, the men aren’t the only ones to blame, the women are equally responsible. The mother-in-law suppresses her daughter-in-law saying ‘’I wasn’t allowed to work, I cooked and cleaned and therefore she should too. Why should she be allowed to enjoy her life?’’
So, instead of pointing fingers at each other, I think it’s time we did a little introspection and made a cohesive effort to give a woman what she deserves.
Resource link - Why Women Empowerment is an Unfulfilled Promise?
