The Making of a BETTER HALF

Call her the granny nanny. Kids like to be with her always as she happily casts a magic world of stories and wisdom before their sweet nuisances. Most of her stories swing around the blissful childhood she spent, the forgone days with her parents, or the hurdles and risks she had to face while bringing up her children. Home and home only, she as well as her stories has never come out of those four letters. No blame on her, but she has never assumed a day out of her house, or her stories never mention a world of stressful office hours.

But past is past. Gone are the days, when you could assume a woman within the four walls of home. Today she is present in every sphere of life (omnipresent??), as active and competitive as men. Her voice has the same depth and weight that the male partakers have been enjoying all through. An impression that women did not contribute much of significance to our civilization other than being just caretakers of their families has changed. Women have made great strides over the last century in areas where they were not historically equal to men; they gained the right to vote, they removed the barriers of traditionally male professions, and they changed the way society looked at them. Women are no longer viewed as primarily “nurturing” or “emotional” creatures, but are judged on their individual qualities.

There is a story behind this glory: a story of exploitation of women in the past. Today’s rising impact of women is the result of that earlier struggles and the resurrection arrived out of it. In our old world, education was a forbidden fruit for girls. Never the idea did enter even in the affluent families, as educating women was considered a big waste that time. A mere wastage of time and money. Overall the conditions were the same. Primarily the belief was permeated upon the fact that women were to take care of the family by being a good housewife. The roles she had to act were a daughter’s, a sister’s, a wife’s, a mother’s, and nothing more. So the idea of education or more plainly, schooling was nowhere meant to be essential in a girl’s life.

Forget all! Unlucky she was. Forget all those missed friends! Forget all those never-happened tests and their marks! Forget all those never-enjoyed holiday’s and picnics! But behind all, there was strong misuse happened that is beyond forgettable. Woman was suppressed and abused inside the four walls. Her words were unreturned and thoughts devaluated. Inside and outside the home she was abused and infringed. Births of girls made minds silent and dissatisfied when births of boys were celebrated. The life of a girl was dull and soundless. No abuse was questioned and curtailed. But a rising was happening in the background, slowly, but strongly.

The plight of women has been changing since then. Slowly, they came out of the four walls and extended those four letters. This was actually a clear call of the time. Communication improvements had created awareness across the minds. This helped to outline a total code of living all over. Adding into the above reason, women were inspired by other successful women and their success stories. An unconscious desire for imitating their views and lifestyle sprouted in the minds of others. In addition, the real awareness of the situation, facilitated by some social bodies and reformers performed in all the places. They made campaigns and dialogues against the existing social disorders and anarchies including the education and empowerment of women. Totally, these movements could improve the conditions a lot.

The style of living was changing on the other side. A revolution in communication made life easy, but more stylistic. The ‘status’ and ‘status symbols’ came into the minds of people forcing them to earn more to live their lifestyles. One breadwinner in one family has become an old concept as both husband and wife started earning. Also the explosion in population made life so competitive. In order to gain the same quality and status of life, people started thinking about ‘dual earners’ in a family.

Today, woman could make her presence in almost all the fields. Science, sports, politics, business and media are just a few major fields, where women have an active participation. There are organizations and social bodies that represent women and feminist issues.

There is female presence in every sphere of science today and they could even step into space travel too in the very recent moments of the time. Kalpana Chawla, the late astronaut, is the proud representation of today’s women of courage and reaching. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women now comprise 46% of all managers and administrators, while only 18% of executive positions were held by women in 1960. Names like Kiran Shaw(CEO Bio Medicon India), Sania Mirza(tennis player) Anju Bobby George (athlete) Aishwarya Rai(actor), Indira Gandhi(ex-prime minister of India) etc. are not just achievers of acclamation, but they are the proud representations of successful women on the whole.

There are more leaders, activists, professionals and other influential and successful women who helped transferring the identity of whole women from the abstraction of kitchen to the bright spheres of community.

Indeed, the mass media revolution has created new models and awareness to women across the world. Today’s woman draws examples not only from her own surroundings, but from the foreign cultures too. The success of females in those places inspires her to a large extent. They closely watch the Hollywood trends, the foreign business channels, and the western fashion amendments. At times, some happenings there would enthuse them too. One such example is the recent nominations for the 75th Academy Awards in the US. It reflected, in great measure, the impact of a few women-powered films in Hollywood. In a male-dominated medium that often relegates actresses to the part of the "love interest" or some other one-dimensional role, this year's Oscar nominees revealed an industry willing to explore riskier and more diverse female protagonists. This kind of global happenings inspires the women all over.

But still...

Barriers, some real, some perceived and some self-imposed, still confront women. Personal, societal, cultural and religious attitudes also impede women even today. Some of the rural areas are just closed themselves from all the changes happening around. There is still a pullback existing in the minds of women. It needs nothing else, but self-realization. In order to understand oneself better one has to stand in a better position to understand. An overall understanding will contribute to a mass awareness that in turn will remove the mental blocks. Finally, it is all the more important to prepare oneself for a big change. Standing away won’t do any good, except self-infringement. So only a joined effort combining mind and body together will do the needed.

Today we are standing far off from the early times of gender preferences and womanhood issues. Today a concern over the status of women has permeated both thinking and rhetoric in the society. The challenge that we have to shoulder, in the light of today’s more relaxing womanhood, women movements and education, and the dynamics of gender equality, is to forget the shibboleths of the past and look forward a new generation of men and women, working together to build a better world. Like two equal halves, the better halves.