Aarif Rashid Malik
In today’s world, we always talk about women empowerment and their security. International conferences, debates, discussions are being conducted throughout the world to create awareness among the people regarding the issues of women. The main motive of all these conferences, debates, discussions, etc. is to emancipate women and to liberate her from oppressive chains that act as a hurdle in the development of women’s personality. The issues of women are being exaggerated to large extent when we are celebrating International Women’s Day every year on 8th march in order to express our so-called solidarity with the womenfolk, who are being exploited, oppressed, marginalised in our societies. I want to raise my objection here, as a student of feminism which is on this basis that to express solidarity with the oppressed womenfolk on a particular day is not only hypocrisy but also exploitation; it is precisely because of this thing that why this kind of solidarity is not being expressed with oppressed women in the normal days. The simple reason is this that in normal circumstances they are hardly concerned regarding the exploitation of women. It means simply this that these so-called well-wisher menfolk want to create a false perception in the minds of oppressed women and these kind of tactics are being used to hide the failure of the administration and also it is one of the important part of soft power to impose its arrogant polices over oppressed women .To organise debate or to conduct international conference on the issues of women is need of hour but it is not only enough because we have to check the realities as to what is happening on the ground level and to what extent we implement such things that we are discussing from decades regarding the issues of women in our society. In today’s world we are proudly saying that women have been empowered and their security has been enhanced but we need to understand these things on the basis of real terms and conditions that is simply this if we think we are living in an age of advancement but we have not advanced our thinking regarding women. For that I will take certain examples from my own culture. Assume for a while, there is person A and person B and both of them have different gender. Person A has a male gender and person B has female gender then there will be two different standards of morality for both these genders respectively within their families (which is evident from this fact that if a girl talks more in a family she is always being rebuked for that by her parents and her parents tell her, “You are a girl and you should act like a girl because you have to go to your next home that is where she is going to be married and parents repeatedly say these things that if you talk too much their, you will hurt our dignity in your in-laws that is speaking of a girl too much in a family is being controlled through the violent language. Assume for a while if it will be boy if he will speak like a nonstop bus but he will be hardly rebuked by his parents. It is because there is too much freedom for boys in our family because it is based on patriarchal system. But the fundamental thing is that restrictions must be equally imposed on both because they are first of all humans and can commit mistake anytime.) This kind of thinking depicts this thing that binaries in the society are not always created by the state but these are existing within the families to justify power relationship for the domination of one and subordination of others. This kind of subordination is always based on the concept of marginalization, exploitation and the concept of othering. This kind of violence also leads to the alienation of women within the family. The another example of bias regarding women can be seen from this angle that if a woman is giving birth to a girl child continuously, at that moment we feel ashamed because we think she has brought disgrace in our society but that is not real case because without women, men have no worth and bias is not limited to this only, we are reading on the daily basis in news that hundreds of girl child are being killed in their mother womb or thousands of women are being killed by their in-laws in the name of dowry or they have to tolerate the taunt of their in-laws or they have to accept divorce proposal in order to get rid from such exploitation and humiliation. Amartya Sen also discusses the similar thing in the concept of “Missing Women” in which he says how the women population day by day is decreasing in South Asia. If we take the case of sex ratio in the states of India it will obviously tell us this thing that the sex ratio of women will be very less as compared to men and there will any state hardly, where the sex ratio of women will be more than men. Even violence is happening on the basis of education against women. In 1995, out of 871 million illiterate people in the world 556 million were women and in 2015 world’s women study says 496 million are illiterate which compromise more than half of the population of the world. In other words, we are saying that if we teach a man we teach a single individual and if we teach a woman we teach whole world and even paradise lies under the feet of mother. This depicts that there should not be any kind of discrimination against woman when it comes to right to education and in constitution of India right to education for everyone have been declared as a fundamental right. From all these things it depicts that violence is unending cycle against women. Until and unless their issue and problems will not be addressed with honesty and impartiality. Whatever men have written about women needed to be reinterpreted and re-evaluated because they are both judge as well as party and needed to be seen with suspicion.
Now if we look into violence against women from the historical point of view it is not something new phenomenon but it is very old process. Even the great philosopher of the world like Aristotle had followed a discriminatory and biased approach towards women. Aristotle’s view regarding women was exploitative and oppressive in nature because he had not considered women as a citizen. According to him a citizen was one who enjoyed the right to share in the deliberative or judicial offices and was able to exercise his political right effectively. According to Aristotle they lacked the deliberative faculty and the leisure to understand the working of politics. He went to that extent by saying that the role of women is confined to family and he further said that the inequality that are existing between men and women in power are natural and justified and can’t be changed because according to him women are weak and inferior as compared to men who are superior and strong. These kind of views were repeated by various philosopher in which one of them was Rousseau who also consider women as a degraded creature. Even the glorious revolution had taken place in the world but still the rights of women were not fully assured and after that they have to strive for their rights over a long period of time. During that time a remarkable book was written by Wollstonecraft namely: A Vindication of Right of Women in 1792. In this book she debunked Rousseau’s view on women in his treatise on education Emile. Having examined the masculine view on women, Wollstonecraft pointed out to the positive and constructive role of education in correcting these distorting views. She believed that right education would develop creativity and critical thinking among women. Mary Wollstonecraft was also critical of those women who were blindly submissive to their husbands because it has snatched happiness and freedom from them and compelled them to lead a life of subordination. She believed it is only reason that will help women to live a happy and blessed life and will help them to reduce their miseries to large extent. Wollstonecraft’s tract was highly hailed as the “first classical work in feminist thought”. With the passage of time, women began to resist very strongly against the exploitation that was happening with them very badly. Feminists began to challenge the myths of liberal on the ground of public-private dichotomy in which liberals were making arguments that an individual must be left free by state in their private life and they must intervene in individual life when it is related to public sphere but feminists nullify this argument by saying that private sphere is also based on exploitation and women is most victim of it through family. They further say it was through the institution of family unequal relationship was setup between men and women and is creating binaries on the basis of gender. In simple terms they define it “Political is personal “. Another remarkable book regarding the women was written by Simon De Beavour in 20th century namely The Second Sex (that is also consider as a bible of feminism). In this book she is justifying the exploitation that is happening with women in their day to day life. She justifies in this book in one part how institution of prostitution is acting as a source of expoliation for women by saying that sexual act is a service for both, the latter is engaged for life by one man; the former has several clients who pay her per item. In prostitution, masculine desire can be satisfied on anybody as it is specific and not individual wives or courtesans do not succeed in exploiting man unless they wield a singular power over them. She also says it is also a well-known fact that there is an increase of prostitution in wars and the crisis of their aftermath.
The security of the women has not been assured in full manner and exploitation against women in the world is happening on daily basis. It means until and unless security of women cannot be assured in every sphere, till that there is no possibility of empowerment of women. I am not saying we should give unlimited freedom to women but freedom for women should be available to that extent so that they can feel a sign of relief and live a life of happiness and dignity.
The authors of the life of a prostitute published in part in Les Temps Modernes tell of her beginnings: I got married at sixteen to a man thirteen years older than I. I did it to get out of my parents’ house. My husband only thought of making me have kids. “Like that, you will stay at home and you won’t go out” he said. He would not let me to wear make-up and didn’t want to take me to the movies. I had to stand my mother-in-law, who came to the house every day and always took the side of her bastard son. The main aim of all these brutal stories that have been mentioned by Simon De Beaviour is to explain how women were exploited by men and how the concept of power relationship was legitimized on the basis of violence. It is because of these circumstances feminists argued that the concept of security needed to be redefined that is the concept of state centric notion needed to be replaced by human security. They also make argument that author who are writing on high politics narrative need to focus on subaltern discourse because their suffering and problems are being hardly discussed in state centric discourse. In spite of the fact that feminism has strengthened its roots but still the crime rate against the women is still high and these crime are happening in every country and the most worst ten countries where women are victims of too much crimes in which few of them are Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan etc as per report of United Nations of 2019. It is also said that 650 millions women are being married below the age of 18 throughout out the world and thirty three to thirty five percent of women are suffering from sexual violence or physical violence in different part of the world. This means that the security of the women has not been assured in full manner and exploitation against women in the world is happening on daily basis. It means until and unless security of women cannot be assured in every sphere, till that there is no possibility of empowerment of women. I am not saying we should give unlimited freedom to women but freedom for women should be available to that extent so that they can feel a sign of relief and live a life of happiness and dignity.
(The author is a freelancer.Views are his own, [email protected] )
