Feminism or tokenism?

 

 

Seema Mustafa

Journalist, The Asian Age Tokenism and not direct action has always been the way adopted by governments to address the women’s issue. A woman President for the first time since independence is expected atone for the abject failure of the Manmohan Singh government and Parliament to push through the women’s reservation bill. It is also being used to demonstrate the government’s gender sensitivity regardless of the fact that the woman President was not the first choice of any political party, and emerged only as a compromise candidate when the Congress party and the Left were unable to reach a consensus on any one individual for the President of India.

The story begins from the months before the female child is born. The ratio of girls as compared to boys has dropped drastically in Punjab, with statistics and investigative reports pointing at a high rate of female foeticide. The law against this is in place, but the implementation remains faulty and even today there is evidence of clinics being used for illegal sex determination and subsequent abortion of the girl foetus in the capital itself, and under the nose of the supposedly watchful authorities.

If the girl survives this, she has to fight against prejudice and discrimination all her life. She is the last to be fed, the last to be clothed, the last to be educated after her male siblings have been attended to and there is sufficient money left to attend to her needs as well. Despite the fact that she is more diligent in class, she often has to drop out of school as she is either required to help at home, or the money is not sufficient, or her parents want her to get married. Husbands for her are bought with a handsome dowry, and after marriage her status is dependent directly on her ability to produce a male child. Even today widows are discarded as harbinger of bad news, and made to lead lives that completely compromise their freedom and their dignity. Movement forward has been slow, as governments have used tokenism as a substitute for real action. So a woman president becomes more important, than the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill ensuring that at least one third of the total seats are reserved for women in every state legislature and Parliament. This, if implemented, would hasten the process of true empowerment but the bill has been effectively blocked by all the political parties, even those who have been hailing the appointment of a woman president as an indication of their committment to the women’s cause. Women need empowerment, to ensure their own protection, respect, dignity and sovereignty and this can only be if they have an effective voice in the legislature.

Sixty years have passed without the position of the women changing dramatically on this ground. The country cannot progress until and unless this is attended to on a war footing, and the women’s bill is one such measure that will go a long way in bringing about genuine empowerment. Remember there is truth in the saying, you educate a man you educate an individual; you educate a woman you educate a family. This holds true even if the word “educate” is read as “liberate” for there can be no progress if one half of the population of a country remains caught in social, economic and political shackles.

Political leaders, while blocking the bill ,were quick to point out that there was no discrimination against women, “we worship them.” Well, women do not want to be worshipped and in the process discarded on a shaky pedestal. They want equal rights, equal opportunities, equal status so they they are not denied justice and are able to live and contribute as equal citizens of India.