The story tells the feelings of a father on seeing the thought process of his teen aged daughter; the pride of a father on his daughter’s confidence and motivation!!
The girl in her teens, with dark brown eyes that are deep like ocean, with her elegance in walk as if caring for the dignity of mother earth in each step, sparkles of confidence in her face, went on to the dice to speak. Clad in a blue coloured dress she adjusted the mike, cleared her throat, getting the nod from the panel to start, she addressed the mass,
“Respected Jury members and my dear friends, today I am pleased enough to have this opportunity to stand here and speak about the most important and at the same time obscured topic of women empowerment.
I would like to cite the following points for my stand in favour of women empowerment. First of all, I would like to make it clear that women empowerment according to me means to bring women in equal terms as men, just like the other half. It doesn’t at all mean to give women a reservation, which in fact according to me means a silver spoon and demeans their potential, nor is it to make the domestic violence case only applicable to violence against females by males nor is it to give monopolistic power to women to exploit men in cases of molestation, because there are many cases fought in courts where the accused men are quite innocent yet fall prey to some tricks of some women.
As per me, women should be given the same rights to freedom and to live their life their way.
If the society can accept a man as a professional cook, then there should not be any problem if the same man cooks at his home or if a lady walks in the street being a business woman or an administrative officer.
By women empowerment I mean if a lady needs to do all the job of household after returning from her work, because it’s her home, then the man residing there should also take half of the responsibility and help her cook. Everything should be divided as the home is of both the persons.
Again at another stance women empowerment is not just to enhance diversity by expanding the mere presence in numbers but giving equal scope and opportunity. The way Kiran Mazoomdar Shaw, the CEO and founder of Biocon, was denied of a bank loan as a woman entrepreneur and asked to bring a male guarantor for the loan, same shouldn’t happen again on the name of empowerment. The way politics in the top hierarchy plays its role with a stereotyped belief as women being inefficient and incapable, that should be condemned for the responsibility of building of those businessmen and the founders once nested on the shoulders of women.
Women don’t need to be worshipped as Goddesses but they need to be treated as human beings.
We talk a lot about empowering them and enabling them to stand on their own, but they need to climb and walk and run, quite far way ahead is what we forget. Our society has come to such a point where half of our population, to be specific the women of our society feel far less confident in comparison to men and they feel humiliated when appreciated for their performance in the field of professional work. The effect of the legacy of our beliefs and dominance has become such that we make half of our population numb enough to stand to compete, there only we are defeated as a race of humans.
Leaving apart the legacy from the past, we are yet far behind in equalizing the salaries. The same job if done by a woman will get less remuneration in comparison to men. There is absolutely no logic behind it except our thought process. If in today’s world Sheryl Sandberg writes that her employer said her that it is a profitable business on his part to get the same job done with a similar brain in half of the price; I guess we all understand the gravity of the issue, how deep rooted this problem is in our thought process.
Women empowerment doesn’t mean to worship ladies or give them the silver spoon it means to give them a human like treatment before thinking about their gender, it means to not have the power to donate a girl to anybody else as the custom of ‘kanyadan’ goes, it means not to think or make them think that they are the responsibility of somebody else. It’s about making them powerful enough, both physically and mentally, if only one doubts their power; and giving them the choice to lead their life their way, be accountable for themselves and get the gentlemen under the same scrutiny as to be decent enough to behave and not eve-tease as well as to be respectful to human beings despite gender. At the end it’s about cultivating humanity in its true sense; treating everyone equally.
Thank you for your patience.”
She walked down the stairs and The audience was astounded at the clarity of her thoughts, the hall was silent and a man was wiping his tears, sitting there with contentment. He was looking at the girl more and more intensely as if trying to read her thoughts and relate her views to the life she has led. His daughter, the one who when born was despised so much by his community that he even had second thoughts for a moment regarding her birth, but today he realised how big a blunder it would have been if he had let her go and fight with her destiny just like many others!
The girl, his daughter, who had always made him proud to be a father would have been abandoned and he would have never realized the thoughts of a lady so well.
His one right decision had the potential to make wonders and those wonders were visible now to him, clear and distinct. He made a right decision by educating this person, who not only changed his view points of doubt and prejudice but also is in a mission to bring a new direction to the society. Her words might be sweet, her face might be tender with innocence, her gestures might be pure and naïve but her logic was enough to shake the belief system of the world. If girls will be empowered this way, our nation or world will never be any drearier.
Just when he was too pensive in his world of thoughts that the girl called out, “Papa, you are here! You didn’t tell me you would come! You heard my speech? How was it??”
He kept on looking at her and just said, “Yes, it was awesome!”
He hugged her with pride and serenity.
