War Against Women

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.’