3 paragraphs from Sharmila Tagores Women, Cinema and Society. While education, employment opportunities and social networks have given some women like us a voice, many women still continue to suffer injustice silently in the name of family, honour, tradition, religion, culture and community. So ingrained are certain modes of thinking that bias is not even perceived as bias, not even by the women themselves. As Uma Chakravarti says, all of us carry within us a sense of the past which we have absorbed over the years from mythology, popular beliefs, tales of heroism, folklore and oral history. This medley of ideas, which is patriarchal in nature, has a strong hold on our collective consciousness and forms the basis of our understanding of the status of women in the past. These perceptions are also continuously brought forward and constituted and reconstituted anew. Centuries of imbibing such ideas probably resulted in son preference in the Indian family, particularly in the north. While reviewing the book Religion, Patriarchy and Capitalism, Rajesh Komath says, and I quote, ‘This entrenched mindset furthers the idea of female infanticide, considering girls as an economic burden. The dowry system and the notion of the girl child belonging to her husband (a kind of tying up of a woman to a man) treat women as an expensive commodity in her own family. Even at a time of societal progress in terms of science and technology, there seems to be no real benefit to the woman. Rather, what is observed is a reverse societal dimension NaMo, hope you read this and change your thoughts. As a leader, it is certainly not expected from you that you will promote and propagate gender bias in a rally by saying If a daughter is born in your house, plant five trees along your farm and when shes grown up you can sell the timber to fund her wedding. If you must suggest people to plant saplings, tell them to do so for a greener planet so that global warming can be stopped and not for marrying off daughters and making their lives secure. You are only promoting deforestation and dowry - two deadly social and environmental evils through your comment. If you think of bringing in progress, focus on equal treatment of CHILDREN instead of addressing them as a girl child and a boy (child). If the foundation of education is strong, the rest will fall in the right place and a girl will work for her own security and fund her own wedding; fathers wont have to cut timbers for that. I would love to believe that your intention is noble when you say, Youve voted for vote bank politics, try progress focussed politics,. In order to usher in progress the focus needs to be on more serious issues like EDUCATION, EQUALITY, EMPLOYMENT, LAW and ORDER and similar such issues and definitely NOT marriage.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:02:49 +0000
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