TV
Women’s Equality Day is celebrated on August 26 every year. Gender equality is slowly yet steadily gaining roots in India with both the society and the government bodies considering it to be one of the most important factors for the overall development and progress of the country.
Decades ago Indian women were not allowed to go out of their homes to learn something or go to schools. The scenario changed when social activities like Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule started the first girls’ school in India. That one step has now become a blessing for women who have excelled in almost all fields and are working at the top ranks.
From going abroad for studies to serving as IAS officers and CEOs of multinational companies, women are now enjoying success and quality of life in almost all fields. Indeed the struggle for women’s equality has come a long way.
Law is supportive
Be it the inheritance of properties or getting alimony after divorce, most of the Indian laws now support women and help them to get their due rights. That is why they can now enjoy what the males until a few decades ago considered only their birthright.
Earlier women were not given any share in the ancestral property. But now the law says that women have equal rights as men when it comes to both ancestral and parental properties.
So both through education and by enforcement of supportive law, women are now enjoying equal rights in India.
Malpractices that still prevail
For centuries India has had many malpractices like women going to sati, dowry practices, and many more. While the practice of sati was stopped during British rule, the dowry practice continues even today. Many families feel burdened whenever a girl child is born in their family.
The parents start saving for the dowry of their girl since her infancy and that is also one of the reasons many families in several parts of the country abort a girl child if detected early during pregnancy.
There have been shocking incidences where the girl infants have been killed or drowned to death immediately after birth because the parents do not want to face the problem of marrying their daughter and giving huge ransom in dowry.
Discrimination and domestic violence are two other enormous issues that still prevail in Indian society and are a big stigma to this movement for women’s equality.
For this, the perception of both males and women in India needs to be changed and with education and social awakening, the days are not far when Indian women will also be looked upon as equals even in small towns and villages.
