To (Wo)men, With Love
Do you often feel the world to be a little too intimidating for the vivacious woman that you are? Do you often feel the weight of society’s expectations wanting you to behave in a certain way just because you are a woman? Do you feel a deluge of emotions rushing through you when you see video-clips of women being oppressed and raped and the spectators keeping mum? Do you feel the agony of women whose voices are muzzled for speaking against the shackles of patriarchy? Are you promised those wings only to be clipped by marriage at a ‘right age’? Is your ticking biological clock a cause of worry for people around you? Are your dreams nearing their end just because you were born a woman?
Congratulations! You are not alone. 49.6% of the current population on earth, i.e. the women, have felt at least one of these emotions at some point in life. The number could spiral upwards if we had life on Mars too. But what if I tell you that you are equal, if not superior to the other gender? What if I tell you that even when you comprise just ‘half’ the population on this broken planet, the leader in you can make it ‘whole’ again? What if I tell you, that you are the spring of human life for every breath that one takes traces its origin from you? How can you be ordinary then? How can you be chained? How can you be belittled? How can you think your voice doesn’t matter? With every woman who surrenders under the weight of patriarchy, the well of hope and change dries up. With every woman who is okay with being paid less than her male counterparts, the gender pay gap gets validated. With every woman who accepts she can be raped in marriage, marital rape gets normalized. With every woman who consents to only men being at the helm of every institution, women empowerment becomes a pipe-dream. That is the price we pay for a woman’s indifference.
On the contrary, every conscious effort towards bridging the gender gap has a ripple effect. But can women who are in the minority, make any considerable difference when the majority at the helm turn a blind eye to issues that do not concern them? Though women single-handedly cannot change the reality of a misogynist world, they can at least become the force behind this change, a bulwark against oppression and patriarchal mindset. If the most affected don’t raise their voice, the least affected never will. For us to have men by our side as torch bearers of women empowerment, we, the female community, have to heal the fault lines within and help every woman realize her highest potential. The social divide between women themselves , like urban vs rural, educated vs illiterate, working vs homemaker, wealthy vs impoverished, married vs unmarried and so on, has to be bridged for us to identify ourselves with each other as just women and not put each other into subsets. We cannot claim to be fighting for one woman’s rights and ignorant of the others’. That would be equivalent to replacing one kind of discrimination with another. Shouldering responsibility and helping the most marginalized section can be a humble beginning towards a larger social change.
To every woman reading this, may you find strength around you to rise above the gendered norms of the society. May you realize that when you stand up for others, you stand up for yourself too and vice versa. May you inspire other women to not give up, to fight for what they believe in and to fearlessly follow their dreams. May the ‘mother’ in you unleash the dormant emotions of selflessness and generosity in a world that is constantly turning spiteful. Nature has bestowed women with the power of procreation not just to source life, but also to procreate the emotions the world is getting devoid of. May your hearts be sensitive to the pains of others and minds be strong to voice your dissent. May you find strength in the stories of fellow women to rise against patriarchy and misogyny. May your dreams and bucket-lists never tell you that you aren’t enough, may your aspirations never get boxed into can/cannot. May you summon enough courage to go beyond the socially constructed limitations and may you keep cutting through the glass ceiling until there’s none.
To every man reading this, may you feel the agony of being a woman in a world that constantly undermines her existence just because she is not like you. May you empathize with her everyday struggles and promise to never clip her wings. May you realize that her clipped wings are the only hindrance, for she already knows how to fly.
