Gender as relationship after 65 years of Independence
After 65 years of Independence women no longer regard themselves as a separate species. Gender now means relationship. A small step of a woman is now a big leap for man in India.
INDIA IS going to observe its 65 years of Independence with the first woman President to speak on the Independence Day. India can boast now for the first time that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha is a woman. There are two very prominent female chief ministers at present with outstanding capacity for good administration.
The Chairperson of the ruling party at the Centre is also a woman. But still one may ask on the eve of the 65th Independence Day how the women really fare in India now. Are they still a target of the patriarchal giants? Nothing much to despair.
In India we no longer need to agree with Simon de Beauvoir's formulation that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".
Over the yesteryears women in India have been taking big strides in different walks of life. They step out of the boundary set for them by the patriarchal society. Women no longer think in terms of feministic determinism. Gender is to them a relationship now and their fight is more general as it is against oppression, exploitation and deprivation.
They can now think in terms of the society. The awareness is gradually increasing among women because of the escalation in the female literacy rate in the country, from a meagre 53.25% 2009 to 73.86 per cent in 2010. The Department of Women and Child Development has been upgraded to ministry as early as 2006 and its activity is encouraging. The National Commission for Women was set up in 1990 and till today it is doing its job satisfactorily to safeguard rights and legal entitlement of women. Programmes like Swayamsiddha are focused to empower women in the patriarchal society.
As Betty Friedan in her Feminine Mystique says “ A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.” This scenario has much changed.
Women are now able to compete impersonally in the society as men do. They no longer need to compete for dominance in their home with their husband, and with their neighbours for status.
Still on the 65th Independence Day various issues related to gender discourse figure on the panorama of national achievement .It is true that crores of rupees are allocated and yet this gender budgeting is not properly utilized. Women are no less in bad condition than their South African counterparts. Millions of dollars are being spent for empowering women in South Africa. But the black women live the life of abject poverty and humiliation.
In India, the condition may be a little better with more and more vistas of job opportunities being opened up for them. Even in the army, women are now recruited as commissioned officers and being sent to the ground. A new transformational level has been ensured for the women. At least in this patriarchal society, a girl can now speak of marrying a man she chooses as her life partner.
Impediments may come, but they do not come from men’s side only. Job reservations for women are not yet possible and it is not desirable too. Women can stand on their own feet. In the villages women are more organized in their search of employment and fight against domestic violence. In the cities, sexual harassment is being brought to notice by women themselves.
The UGC has been running at present nearly 300 Women Study Centre all over the country and they are operating more as Gender Studies Centre. The Constitution of India renounces practices derogatory to the dignity of women (Article 51(A) (e)), and also allows for provisions to be made by the State for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief, (Article 42). The UGC centres are looking after these.
Number of Schools and colleges meant especially for women is increased. There are railway compartments both in the local trains and metro specially meant for women. Domestic violence has decreased and only very few stray incidents occur. Media is quite alert on such issues of sexual harassment and domestic violence. At the time of appointment in the institutions, gender bias is almost removed in giving jobs to women.
Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency. Women have miles to go before they become real ‘swayamsiddha’.
Gender budget is being matched with gender allocation and it is yet to be ensured that the women themselves should be taking a vital role in bearing the accountablity for realization and utilization of such a huge amount of money earmarked for empowering women. It is a woman who can utilise the allocation meant for women in her best way. This is unfortunately not done in many cases till today. Women are smaller in number, true.
But those sincere few can be taught how to utilize the allocation. Today young women have joined the campaign for literacy, fight against dowry system, and fight against injustice and also against the label that is put against them when they try to step out of their boundary set by the patriarchal society.
The Constitution of India guarantees to all Indian women equality (Article 14), no discrimination by the State (Article 15(1)), equality of opportunity (Article 16), and equal pay for equal work (Article 39(d)). All these are to be translated into reality.
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