Rekha Dhondiyal
Senior Teacher, Study Hall School

Why are women exploited all over the world? Also why does society in India seem so brutalized today? The recent Delhi rape case jolted us out of our slumber and awakened our collective conscience. The rage erupted like a tsunami and swept away centuries of indifference and drowned everyone in tears, sorrow and guilt. The whole nation hung their head in shame. They felt rape is not about sex. It is about man’s power and domination.  How and when it reared its ugly head and reached such monstrous proportions is something to think about.

The story goes that when first man and woman came into being, they lived as hunter and home maker. When the woman gave birth to a baby, the man got jealous because he couldn’t manufacture a baby whereas the weaker sex could.  Since that day he began controlling her and thus patriarchy was born.

When violence acts against women take place, society takes them as unfortunate incidents, only because they were not at the receiving end. Do we then proactively encourage maltreatment of women?  Of course, man is to blame but isn’t the woman also party to the crime by considering the male progeny as god? She thinks boys are more equal than girls, not her fault perhaps. She inherited this from her mother.

While changing the mindset is a wonderful objective, it’s not good enough. Firstly, it’s going to take decades to bring about a paradigm shift, we don’t have the time, can’t sacrifice any more women to such barbaric ways. The law has to help in punishing and deterring rape.  Punishment has to be given speedily.  Fast track courts would stop the- would-be rapists in their tacks! If a country can’t protect its women, half its population, it is not civilized.

Mothers should learn to treat daughters and sons alike.  When parents get dolls for the daughter and a truck for the son, they reinforce stereotypes. It would be heavenly if the mother made her son into a metro sexual, in touch with his feminine side. It would be nicer still, if she told him to sometimes prepare breakfast for all. She could tell the daughter to get fruits from the market. This way the both of them would grow up as equal beings capable of doing all the jobs equally well. She could make a rule that the two would be home before it got dark, not only the daughter. Training has to begin at home. Children are like a sponge, the first 7 years of their life they absorb and imbibe what they see in their home.

Victims of assault and rape have to be offered support while keeping their identity a secret and the rapists should be stigmatized. Social boycott might work if their face is splashed in all the papers and on TV channels. Why should they be allowed to cover their face?

Women should dress as they please, go wherever they want to.  Freedom is their birth right. But they must carry a pepper spray, learn taekwondo, boxing and hit them where it hurts most.  But they must also remember that discretion is the better part of valour. They don’t have to fear men but it is good to accept that perhaps they are physically stronger than women.