Asha had quit her job that day and it was her last meeting with her boss
" So you have quit?"
"Yes. I don't have another job in hand I know it would be difficult to explain the gap...but I couldn't go on like this.."
"Aah but you are a girl, you can say anything...", said her boss nonchalantly..
"So where are you joining?", asked one of her colleagues.
"Nowhere ..."
"So are you getting married?", he asked...
When sexism and gender bias in corporate is discussed these kinds of things probably don't figure. It has to be sexual harassment only then probably a brow will be raised..probably!
It is funny, after all those struggles for equality and gender justice have we moved any forward? Today when it is 2015, (when we were kids didn't we all hear 2015 that far off year where a lot of things would have changed for better and we would be living in a better world) in that 2015 marriage is still considered as a career option for a woman. After all it is her natural ability to manage the house, who says it is anything less, isn't that work, it is the natural division of labor... the fascists, Nazis, Corporates, Hindus, Christians...(add any other category) all have said this, haven't they?
Taking the argument further in the wake of the rape culture in India, the next thing that would be said is that the problem is woman coming out of the houses that is why the rapes happen, so it is better that they stay indoors and probably the corporations will encourage them to work from home and a little later not work, we will may the men enough to feed their families. What is the need for the women to work anyway, when they are fed and clothed isn't that all they need. After all it is nature they are inferior!
I belonging to that inferior class of people, have something to say: I can't walk on the roads because I'm scared, I keep looking around all the time to see if someone is approaching, I don't want to be groped or raped, I keep shifting from the foot path to road because I'm scared someone of the foot path will attack me, then I go back to the footpath because I'm worried someone on the bike would attack me on the road. I can't go to work, because I feel disgusted to hear "but you are a woman.." It has began to sound like an abuse, the word "woman". Am I getting into self loathing ? I don't know. I can't travel, you all know the rant now. I know the solution "Get a guy to accompany you..". But I was under an illusion I am a fully functioning human being who has all that is needed to be able to manage her life...but probably I was wrong.
I remember a motivational poster, one of those which are sold on the foot paths. You must have seen it the one which talks about Solomon islands where trees are killed by cursing, the intention of the poster is to show how the spirit can be killed. I'm not sure if it is true, if the trees die, but human beings unfortunately do get affected. With all this that is happening around, by telling us we are cursed because we are women, we can't function normally because we are women...will it kill us may be not now, not immediately, but it will probably cement the set of inferior beings who cannot trust others, cannot trust themselves and always live in fear.
One might say but sexism and gender violence also affects men, it definitely does isn't it all the more a reason for us all to stop it. Probably we should begin by acknowledging that it is not somebody from a "lower class" "lower caste" "uneducated" or one of all those categories which one associates with the undesirable other, as the one who perpetrates violence. There will be a change the day we dare to check ourselves if we the ones who is perpetrating the violence on someone, the day when I'm ready to examine myself and correct myself. The day gender question is not raised because of some headline in the newspaper but gender is forgotten and we live like equals. When the necessary condition to be called a human being would be to treat the other equally. Until then the fight has to be on!
