MORE I interact with Indian ladies from across the world, more I realise how similar everyone’s story is. All of us are going through the same or have gone through the same struggles pertaining to our gender. We all have experienced family expectations from us to maintain family honour. We all have been repeatedly taught to accept the weaknesses of our gender without a fight. We all have heard at one point or other in our lives about what girls can do and cannot do to earn respect from the society.

 

Yet, we all continue to fight our individual battles. What happens to us strictly remains within our house’s four walls. Mothers struggle all their lives to have a dignified existence, and still, they forget to advise their daughters to be strong. Imagine if all the women in the country were to come together and bring about a feminist revolution, perhaps things could be better for all of us.

 

Feminism has earned itself a bad reputation but feminism started out as a movement to equate the status of men and women by giving them equal respect. Feminism never undermined gender differences that (I acknowledge) exist between males and females. A man can never be as good a mother as a female can. Similarly, a woman can never be as good a father as a male can. Feminism does accept these anatomical and physiological differences between the two genders. However, it seeks for both genders to be equally respected. They are both human after all. Humans, as a species, cannot progress without either one of them... for obvious need of both male and female for procreating reasons.

 

Still, India is concentrating hard on eliminating its female population slowly. Is it really that tough to imagine (for the world’s most populous country) that, without women, reproduction is really not a possibility?

 

At the moment, situation of female life is so grave in India that it’s about time that feminism (in its true form) makes it mark in the Indian-scheme-of-things. Concerned women and men of India need to come together, organise themselves, and revive the movement of Feminism. It is crucial that women be respected equally as men for female lives to be spared. I really do believe that women need to snatch that respect instead of waiting for it to be bestowed upon them ... because, my dears, that will never happen in (insanely patriarchal) India.