A discussion on women Empowerment

Something’s are just destined to happen, so was the lecture I attended last year. I visited one great school and wished to sit in their classroom and luckily I sat in an English class whereby they were discussing the Arunudhi Roy ‘The God of small things’ and as this novel is based on women empowerment, the discussion shifted in that direction.

It was a smooth and a very nice discussion but not what I anticipated as it was without any boundary, the teacher was just there to refine their thoughts but at no point she blocked them and they were free to express their thoughts in any language they wanted to.

However, the best part was the discussion that was happening in that class and I would try to ponder as much thoughts as I can over it.

So, it started the way a discussion started with the teacher raising her views stating that there are movements like ‘Take back the night’ which makes women feel empowered and reinforces the support and tragedy which still lies in our world.

But, it was interesting to see a kid refuting the discussion saying but what does these movements serves, as it happens just for a single day and for the rest 364 days the life moves as normal, is it surely a solution. But then there were surely points in favor of this movement as they give support to the women and make them aware of the situation and prepare them to face the worst.

Then one girl raised the point that these movement do serve their purpose it’s just that they are bit slow and takes time and backs it up saying that in Delhi Metro now girls have separate compartment to travel and it is surely because some people must have realized it’s importance.

But then is it really a solution, because somehow it has separated the women from the men and it is portraying that for the women to be safe they should just separate themselves from men. Also, somehow in my personal opinion the today’s movement is more regarded as a fight between the men and the women.

Teacher, at this point didn’t agreed with me and shifted the discussion saying that still many women get rapped and the proper definition of molestation says that ‘If a person touches you without your permission aggressively’ it’s molestation .At this point, girl backed it up with some facts from UNICEF Website that states that one in every four girl get rapped in the world.

And she pointed to the girls in the class only that we can see 14 girls in this class, so according to the statistics 4 of you would be raped in the next 10 years and I can never imagine a teacher posing such a difficult question back at the students who are just in 11^th   standard.

At which, a student again raised his voice that he don’t value on data as most of them are fake at which the teacher replied that these statistics are based on reported data rather than the number of cases actually happens in our country and it could be a very number as most of the women who get molested never report knowing they would be the one who would be at loss after this.

So, a boy raised his voice saying that everyone get’s molested who thinks that boys don’t get molested or abused its just that we just talk about women and have started thinking it as a weaker sex which needs protection and the women’s should make themselves strong rather than joining these movements.

At which a girl asked but how can they do that? Also, a girl from Saudi Arabia pointed out to some scary details i.e. in Saudi if a girl get raped then she get 40 lashes without ever judging whose fault is it actually? And if a girl don’t gives to the sexual demand of her husband after 4 days of getting married then her husband has legal rights to rape her? Isn’t it shocking?

At this point I thought to share my ideas and I said ‘I do know that somehow right now the society is facing a uncontrollable situation in case of women’s movement and their rights but it’s because of what we have done in the past, it is because we have stretched the pendulum to one extreme in the last 50 years and it will surely go to the other extreme before coming at the normal position.

Also, I don’t know how women can make themselves strong but I can just give my own example i.e. I have an acrophobia but then I decided that I could overcome it only by working on it so I started going on trekking and then I also started looking at people who do succeed in trekking rather than the images where I see people falling from the hills.

And I suggested them to start going alone, most of the times bad things won’t happen to you and just keep a positive mindset, if there is bad happening in the society then there is also good happening and start looking at the incidents where people are doing the good things and they all should stop reading so much of the statistics and the scary news.

At which a girl raised her concern that ‘Ignorance can never be the solution’ and I do agree with her, and now thinking more about her statement I can just say that ‘I also do know that girls get raped and people do fall from the cliff’ but should I be concerned about how many numbers fallen this month, this year etc.

Because our mind is like a notebook from which we can read only what we will write, and it’s us who have the power to decide what we want to write in it.

This is really one of the best sessions I attended on Women Empowerment and students of XI Standard were doing this. I was  amazed by their openness, frankness, confidence and the belief that they are surely going to get something out of this discussion.

This is one of the best part of my job of seeing so much power in these kids and having a belief that our world is surely in safer hands however it also puts so much responsibility on our generation as still 2/3^rd of our country doesn’t understand the meaning of women empowerment or what rights do they have in this amazing country.