LA CRISE DU GENRE

If we were to trace struggles in history, we would find struggle of colonies, struggle of blacks, struggles of lower caste, struggles of tribals and among all these is one of the prime struggles- struggle of the gender equality. Being a boy or a girl wouldn't be an important issue if it wouldn't have been the social conditions which come as a consequence to your gender. It is ingrained in the very structure of the society to stereotype different occupations and professions for girl and boys and those who say it was a thing of the past have to blow the bubble around and see how the real world looks like. If you were to name five businessmen, it would be easy, but what about five businesswomen? When a girl is born, there is a predetermined social tract on which she embarks: you study or not, then you learn to cook, then you get married, then you become a homemaker, give birth to two children and become a happy mother. This path is so uniform and monotonous for every girl that they start to believe these are the different stages of life when in fact it is nothing but a manufactured conspiracy of a patriarchal society.

I have seen many women talk about feminism and women empowerment, but these are narrow notions of multitudinous issues of general importance. I do not say that being a homemaker is a bad thing and against empowerment of women but instead, training a girl to become a homemaker, not asking or letting her know what she wants to become is what I lambaste. If a woman is a domestic worker earning at best, 20,000 rupees a month, with only four paid leaves and no social protection yet her salary is more than her chauffeur husband, does she become empowered? People have to stop disparaging women empowerment into the no. of earning women. 

A woman becomes empowered when she moves from the condition of 'immanence' to 'transcendence' and that happens when the society stops using the word 'feminine' as in 'act like feminine' as an instrument to restrict women from exploring their full potential. This is not easy as it sounds but it is not impossible also. If you look at it from a wider perspective, if women weren't important, I don't think that nature would have bestowed the momentous responsibility of the continuation of human species upon women. However, there are many men who have made women nothing but a means of having a child. A women is more that. Ironically, she is also the mother from whose womb the man takes birth, she also the wife without whom a man can't be conceived and yet we people think she is the weaker sex. She has the might to battle her own way out and change the very structure of this patriarchal society. All she needs is that medium through which she can understand her importance and transcend from 'immanence' to 'transcendence'. 

But, this brings us to another issue, the transgenders. Women are at least treated as a gender, what about transgenders? They are still not recognised a gender in many countries. They face discrimination on the basis of gender every single day and as a result have ghettoised themselves and have made themselves and their generations to come to engage in petty work so that they remain oblivious to the larger, darker reality of a marginalisation by the society. The hypocrisy is we yearn for their blessings at weddings and at the same time, don't recognise them as a part of the society. I believe that it is time for the society to change for the good and become more inclusive. The policymakers should identify these sections of the society and make progressive legislations to bring them into the mainstream. After all, salus populi suprema lex esto.