Women in general have to face lot of problems and it is believed that in India the problem is even worse. As I hear about more cases of atrocities against women I start introspecting myself as a member of this society. Things are changing but unfortunately it will take at least a generation I believe for the situation to improve. We as a society think regressive to many problems and the solutions we recommend are many times disheartening.
During my childhood, if I was bullied and I complained to my parents, they had a simple solution- face it or don't go to play. Face it was not a difficult solution for my parents because the problem wasn't a severe one. Don't go to play was an easy solution but not an appropriate one. This is how we think of solving problems. Trying to solve problems by avoiding it rather than solving it. Not finding the appropriate solutions to the problem is actually a problem we are facing. Our big problem as a society is not the problem but the outlook towards the problem or the way we want to tackle the problem. As a teacher when I scold a student for not doing home assignments, I am advised to be mild and sometimes not say anything because kids are not strong enough to accept it. A similar attitude issue is when we look for alliances for marriage we don't normally look for love and compatibility between the partners which should head the list but rather we look for physical age (rather than mental age), caste, language, status, etc as criteria. Again our outlook towards a particular aspect is not very sound, although it works in most cases. Things are changing but will take time. Every society evolves and we have definitely changed for the better in most aspects and we will continue to improve our outlook.
The kind of problems women face is very difficult to imagine and they are really brave enough to face what they go through. The number of rapes, molestation issues at workplace or otherwise faced by women are so dreadful leaves a mental scar which is very difficult to heal. We need to change our outlook towards women and the way many males as well as females look at females need to change. We become judgmental, we start becoming suspicious of women. The problem cannot be solved by asking women to curb the way they behave, or protecting them or asking them not to go out alone. If we are going to continue with this, I am afraid we are looking at simple solutions which tries to side step the problem rather than solving the problem. What we really need is a strong policing, enforcement of laws for such crimes. These are the short term solutions. The long run solution has to come through proper education. We have a long way to go as a society in terms of education and till then we will be improving our literacy rate without increase the group of educated individuals.
During my childhood, if I was bullied and I complained to my parents, they had a simple solution- face it or don't go to play. Face it was not a difficult solution for my parents because the problem wasn't a severe one. Don't go to play was an easy solution but not an appropriate one. This is how we think of solving problems. Trying to solve problems by avoiding it rather than solving it. Not finding the appropriate solutions to the problem is actually a problem we are facing. Our big problem as a society is not the problem but the outlook towards the problem or the way we want to tackle the problem. As a teacher when I scold a student for not doing home assignments, I am advised to be mild and sometimes not say anything because kids are not strong enough to accept it. A similar attitude issue is when we look for alliances for marriage we don't normally look for love and compatibility between the partners which should head the list but rather we look for physical age (rather than mental age), caste, language, status, etc as criteria. Again our outlook towards a particular aspect is not very sound, although it works in most cases. Things are changing but will take time. Every society evolves and we have definitely changed for the better in most aspects and we will continue to improve our outlook.
The kind of problems women face is very difficult to imagine and they are really brave enough to face what they go through. The number of rapes, molestation issues at workplace or otherwise faced by women are so dreadful leaves a mental scar which is very difficult to heal. We need to change our outlook towards women and the way many males as well as females look at females need to change. We become judgmental, we start becoming suspicious of women. The problem cannot be solved by asking women to curb the way they behave, or protecting them or asking them not to go out alone. If we are going to continue with this, I am afraid we are looking at simple solutions which tries to side step the problem rather than solving the problem. What we really need is a strong policing, enforcement of laws for such crimes. These are the short term solutions. The long run solution has to come through proper education. We have a long way to go as a society in terms of education and till then we will be improving our literacy rate without increase the group of educated individuals.
