Women power
The Olympics tally again proves that women have a right to lead the way, in all spheres
Durga, Kali, Shakti, they call her intermittently but one gets a feeling that it is not really heartfelt. Not with what happened in Hathras and, quite recently, with a young minor girl in the nation’s Capital. There’s something seriously and drastically wrong with us, us here meaning both men and women; only we refuse to look at the truth in the eye. The menfolk for being the perpetrators, and the women for taking it generation after generation. In a country where women are still seen as homemaking and child-rearing machines, gender inequality is highly evident. The fact is that if you haven’t seen or experienced it, you are either blind or one of the perpetrators.Even after encountering all these obstacles and hardships, women have come a long way, overcoming several barriers to establishing their identity; they have risen above several unfathomable barriers to show their true potential. Be it sports, science, astronomy or any other field, women have shown their steely potential in every field. Being a woman, things aren’t easy in a patriarchal, male-dominated society and unseen factors like passive discrimination have all to be braved by the female of the species.
The first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal, Karnam Malleswari, was deemed unfit and was making news for all the wrong reasons, not for the hard work she had put into her preparations but for the uncharitable comments she was garnering about her physique and personal life, according to a record. In spite of her being one of the top athletes in her chosen discipline, only four out of 42 Indian journalists came up to watch her compete. Or similarly, when India’s former sprint queen PT Usha broke down in front of media narrating the not-so-infrequent discrimination faced by her. Basically, no sector can claim to be totally fair to the fair sex. The first Indian-origin woman to travel to space, Kalpana Chawla, was frequently told during her entire childhood that females cannot be astronauts. She had to break free of all these gender norms, and ultimately the glass ceiling and the gravitational pull, to prove herself that she was fit and capable as much as any male around. Better than any, can be argued. Although the situation has not changed for the better but we are headed towards improvement in the societal genetics where women are given, or at least are shown to be provided, equal opportunities.
Source: The Pioneer
