‘The Life of an Indian Woman’ (Status of Woman in India)

Being an Indian woman is tough, especially in India. India is a country where laws are made and rights are given to women, but these laws and rights are never executed. “Gender equality” is something every woman knows about but still doesn’t understand the meaning of.

Indians are influenced to a great extent by the Western lifestyle; the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the English language that has become a must, etc. In fact people who don’t know English are very wrongly considered “illiterate”. So, since we like to follow the West so much, why not follow their logic as well? Why is gender equality in India only nominal?

I agree that most of the urban Indian women today work and earn for themselves. But the logic behind that is to be independent, have an identity and be considered as equal to men. But that’s not what an Indian woman is in the eyes of Indian Society. An Indian woman in India is still expected to take her husband’s last name and move into her husband’s house, the very husband whom her parents chose for her. She is not expected to be more educated than her husband or earn more money than him. Cooking for her husband and his family and doing all the household chores is supposed to be her sworn duty, no matter how tired she is after coming back home from work. It’s her problem. If she can’t handle both the responsibilities, she should give up her job. Is that equality?

And the biggest problem is that most Indian women agree to all these prejudiced rules created by society. Why can’t they see the logic behind having a job and earning? Why don’t they follow the rest of the things women in the West do? Like moving out of the house and into a dormitory or apartment on turning 18, making their own decisions, doing part time jobs to support themselves, graduating and getting a full time job, deciding who they want to marry and buying a house together with her husband, sharing everyday expenses with him, in short, being equal to him. After all, it’s nature’s very law that animals and birds let go off their offspring when they’re old enough, so that they learn to survive on their own.

Being an Indian woman myself, I find myself surrounded by people who expect me to have an interest in cooking, sewing and embroidering, just because I belong to the female species. Why can’t I have interests like video games and be tech savvy, which I am? I hate cooking, and it’s frowned upon and considered almost as a sin. The reason I hate cooking is because my brother isn’t expected to cook, nor is he expected to help around the house. I don’t like the fact that women here are taken for granted and expected to do what they’re “supposed” to do without being asked. I also don’t like the fact that women get a quota on seats in the buses while also being allowed to sit on any seat they like. That’s also not equality! If a man can stand and wait for a seat to get empty, so can a woman!

My own mom is leading the life of a housewife, and I see her being helpless and being dependent on my father for almost everything. It irritates me that someone is not allowed to live life of their own accord, just because they’re women. It irritates me that women are “married off” to go to their husband’s house. It irritates me that women have to drop their maiden name and take on a new last name and they have to go through the process of having all their documents like a driver’s licence revised, the irony being that the reason a woman learns driving is to feel independent. Well just feeling independent is not enough! You have to BE independent.

The only reason India is the 4th most dangerous place in the world for women is the fact that women are looked down upon, and treated as second class citizens. And women in India don’t have the courage to speak up because of the kind of environment they’re born and brought up in, one in which they’re taught to stay silent and compromise on everything. The only reason there are very few women at top positions here in India, despite being very talented and educated, is because our forefathers have passed down everything to their sons, and they to theirs, and so on, and this continues even in this day and age, because women are still not really independent.

The West treats women differently. Women there are taught to stand up for themselves, and men are taught to respect women. In fact even the Indians out there have a different view of women. It’s because of how the culture and environment influences people. The West has managed to influence India to a great extent, but not well enough. And whatever the Indians have picked up from the West, they follow blindly and without reason. Now it is up to women to change themselves, so that they can change everyone else’s thinking, and live the kind of life they’re “actually”supposed to.

Also if we see, the status of women in modern India is a sort of a paradox. If on one hand she is at the peak of ladder of success, on the other hand she is mutely suffering the violence afflicted on her by her own family members. As compared with past women in modern times have achieved a lot but in reality they have to still travel a long way. Their path is full of roadblocks. The women have left the secured domain of their home and are now in the battlefield of life, fully armored with their talent. They had proven themselves. But in India they are yet to get their dues. The sex ratio of India shows that the Indian society is still prejudiced against female. There are 933 females per thousand males in India according to the census of 2001, which is much below the world average of 990 females. There are many problems which women in India have to go through daily. These problems have become the part and parcel of life of Indian women and some of them have accepted them as their fate.
Rape, sexual harassment, molestation, eve-teasing, forced prostitution, etc are a common affair today. The crime graph against women is increasing at an alarming rate. The condition of an Indian widow is quite deplorable. At home, the woman's contribution towards home as a housewife is not recognized. Sexual harassment at work places is also a common affair.
It is a shame that even after over sixty years of independence women are still exploited. The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments have provided 33 percent reservation for women in the Panchayati Raj System. Women have now started demanding their rights. They want to work side by side with men and contribution towards the social, economic and political development of the society. Swami Vivekananda has rightly remarked, "It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing."
Women themselves should come forward and unite in the march towards improving their status. They should g\draw inspiration from empowered women like Indira Gandhi, the first woman Prime Minister of India; Vijayalakshmi Pandit, the firs woman President of the UN General Assembly; Kiran Bedi, India's first woman IPS officer; Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-American woman astronaut, Pratibha Devsingh patil, the first woman President of India, and many others. Some of the great women of the pre-Independence periods are Rani Laxmi Bia of Jhansi, Chan Bibi, Ahilya Bai, Razia Sultan and others.
Today modern woman is so deft and self-sufficient that she can be easily called superwoman, as she juggles many fronts single handedly. Women are now fiercely ambitious and are providing their metal not only on the home front, but also in their respective careers, education in the society.
Women represent 48.2 percent of the country's population. Several developmental programmes have been implemented by the Five Year Plan. In 1985, a separate Department of Women and Child Development was set up. The major programmes include Support to Tanning-cum- Employment Programme (STEP) for women, Mahila Kosh, Women's Development Corporation, etc. The Supreme Court has made a ruling that a other has the right to act as the guardian of her minor child. It has made sexual harassment at workplace as an offence.
The Indian Constitution has bestowed equal rights on women. They enjoyed all social, political and economic rights. For equal work, both men and women are eligible for equal wages. Women in Indian are coming up in all spheres of life. They are joining the universities and colleges in large numbers. They are entering into all kinds of professions like engineering, medicine, politics, teaching, etc. A nation's progress and prosperity can be judged by the way it treats its women folk. Men must recognize and accept the fact that women are equal partners in life.
Though there are problems in the lives of Indian women but they are always ready to fight all the odds and enjoy their life to the full they have their own talent, hobbies, and they socialize according to Indian customs.