Living in a male orientated society is as oppressive as it sounds. A place where women are treated as second class citizens, shuns talks of empowerment. For centuries the female species has been the target of irrational injustice. With time it has become better, with women given certain rights and a more equal status as men.
Women have been slowly given a chance to get education; families now feel the need for their daughters to be educated. However, the story does not end there. They are provided with the best education has to offer and they strive to make a name for themselves. To reward their parents for actually giving them a chance to study by working hard and getting better grades than their male fellows.
Then comes the time of marriage. Most of the girls are forced into arranged marriages, which they do not defy in order to protect their family’s honour. Spending your entire life with a person who does not love you and mistreats you, just because you do not have the freedom to walk away. The question here is, when you educated your daughter and forgot to offer her the freedom to make a choice. Did that make her life any better?
A man has the right to first make a career for himself, earn and then marry if he wishes. Why doesn’t a woman get the same right? Why is she forced to stay in a loveless marriage? These women are so used to getting things from their parents and then their husbands that getting a job and making a life of their own is a very frightening aspect for them.
When parents are teaching their sons how to survive in the outside world, they teach their daughters how to take care of her home. Women in our society are sheltered and protected so much throughout their lives that they become weak and cannot survive outside the four walls of their houses without a man. And so they remain chained to their brothers, fathers or husbands, even if they treat them badly. The women are too afraid to face the outside world.
If a woman is raped. She, the victim is told to wear more modest clothes and to not go outside alone. The men are not told to treat women with respect. If some boys on the street tease a girl, her brother or father place restrictions on the girl and forbid her from going out instead of giving those predators a lesson.
This is more visible in the middle class families. Where the girls are provided an education but not freedom. In the lower class families even though the woman is not very literate but she works in houses to make a living. They are more independent and do not need men to survive.
Times have changed now. Being a woman is no longer considered a sin. Women have been given many rights and opportunities. Stop living your lives for someone else, you will regret it all once you look back after 30 40 years. For all the parents out there, do not just educate your daughter; give her the freedom to choose her own path.
