Conquering the Constraints
-Sukanya
Shaji
“All
agree in recognizing the fact that females exist in the human species. Today,
as always, they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that
femininity is in danger. If today femininity no longer exists, then it never
existed. But does the word Woman, then,
have no specific content?”
- Simone de Beauvoir
Women Empowerment has
been the epicentre of social development in our country for almost a decade
now. Ever since we woke into the dawn of independence, bringing women at par
with men has been a serious concern for the civil society. Today, with
globalisation and technological explosions in the scene, it is believed that
the situation is ripe for women to extract maximum advantage out of their
opportunities. The recognition of Women’s rights by the Constitution, birth
control campaigns, criminalisation of sex selective abortions, improvements in
the sphere of education with respect to girl children etc have been pointed out
to be conducive to the Women Empowerment movement.
While all this remains,
the question is, why women don’t feel internally empowered and secure enough to
go out and chase their dreams. It can be seen that women constantly live under
a fear of being attacked. While in men the fear is of being robbed or fatally
injured, in women the concern is of being sexually assaulted. Unless she feels
sure that she can walk on the streets without the fear of being violated, she
cannot be empowered. All external instrumentalities of empowerment will fail
miserably if the internal empowerment does not happen. The external
opportunities designed to bring the fair sex to the forefront of developmental
activities are fruitless if they do not germinate a sense of internal
liberation within the woman.
There are some socio
political and moral connotations that exist in the collective conscience of the
society which bring into existence the sense of insecurity in women and lower the definition of the term ‘Woman’ to
that of a mere vagina or a womb.
1. Virginity
The
primary concern of majority women seems to orbit around their virginity or what
the society construes to be their bodily purity. The concept of virginity in
the context of the Indian society is about having an intact hymen and not
indulging in sexual intercourse before a woman is legally and rightfully
married off. The celibate woman is expected to be a virgin. This image of woman
has been maintained since times immemorial and is continued to remain so even
today.
In
such a scenario, it is forced upon every woman to see to it that she remains a
virgin in the eyes of the immediate society around her, so that she can lead a
socially acceptable life. The society polices her in every move and keeps a
ceaseless vigil over her activities. It looks for instances which can be used
against her to label her as a vamp.
In this sort of an environment, if at all the
woman falls prey to any kind of sexual abuse or assault, the society looks down
upon her and she becomes an untouchable, unacceptable being. She will lose her
identity and dignity and will be shunned by the people around her even though
the unfortunate incident which took place was not due to her fault.
This
fear of being shunned by the society creates an insecure feeling in the mind of
every woman. This makes her think twice before she decides to get out of her
house.
2. Marriage
The
institution of marriage is given paramount importance in the social life on
India. Polygamy has been prohibited by law and couples are expected to stick on
to the marriage and go together for a lifetime. The scene is changing now to a
limited extent with the onset of liberal views on individual freedoms and
cohabitation without a legal marriage is being accepted to a large extent. But
looking at the larger picture, it is seen that the family is treated as the
nucleus of civilization even today and thus, marriages become important.
As
observed in The Second Sex, marriage
is the destiny traditionally offered to women by the society. The celibate
woman is defined and explained with respect to marriage - whether she was
married, plans to get married, is married or rebellious about marriage.
Every
human existence involves transcendence and immanence at the same time; to go
forward, each existence must be maintained, for it to expand towards t the
future, it must integrate the past and while intercommunicating with others, it
should find self-confirmation. These two elements- maintenance and progression-
are implied in any living activity and for the man, marriage permits precisely
a happy synthesis of the two. In his occupation and his political life he
encounters change and progress, he senses his extension through time and the
universe; and when he is tired of such roaming he gets himself a home and
settles down and has an anchorage in the world. But, the woman has no other job
than to maintain and provide for everyday life in an orderly way. She
perpetuates the species without change; she ensures the even rhythm of the days
and continuity of the home, seeing to it that the doors are locked. But she is
allowed no direct influence upon the future nor upon the world. She reaches out
beyond herself towards the social group only through her husband as
intermediary.
Further,
the woman is held so tight by the pathological grip of moral beliefs and
conjugal obligations that she has to think many times before she decides to
walk out of a marriage which of course is not the case with a man. She often
loses her right to sexual and reproductive freedom and is made to stick onto
the marriage despite all these facts by the society around.
This
kind of predominance of the institution of marriage also creates a sense of
insecurity in women whereby they hesitate to venture into challenging sectors
of work and art.
Empowerment
essentially means to equip or supply with ability. Therefore, it does not
concern itself with external factors alone; rather it is about the internal
liberation of an individual. Empowerment should enable a person to form
independent views on various aspects of life and also stand strong and express
them without inhibitions. For the women empowerment movements to bear fruit, it
has to be ensured that women are empowered from within. The discussion here was
with respect to the large majority of the Indian women and their mental frame
in the context of the morality of the Indian society. The situation is
different in the western world as their concept of virginity and marriages are
far liberal and they give importance to individual choices above the creation
of a community life. Even in India, the situation changes in the case of the
elite upper class women who can afford luxuries and don’t often heed to the
opinions of the society around them. But again, the large majority of womenfolk
in the country are still ignorant of their rights and live by the society’s
concept of how they should live.
The
thing to be remembered is that, ‘To empower a woman is to refuse to confine her
to the relations she bears to man and not to deny them to her. It is to let her
have her independent existence.’
