Gender Equality and Women’s Ownership of The Concept(?)

Abstract

In this age of promised gender-equality, we as a country are still battling to protect women and ensure that they continue to exist. From long-practiced female-foeticide to rapes and incidental murders, the society has not left a single stone unturned to mop-off women from the demographical mandate. Nature has created men and women with their set of differences but humans as a tribe have failed to see them as conducive to an all-inclusive growth strategy. In this fight over equality, we have marginalized both the sections and are now taking turns to pacify one while the other was glorified earlier. This paper aims to dwell into the various social and cultural facets that have de-railed the 21st century promises of gender equality, gender sensitisation, gender-inclusive growth and others. Also, it wishes to explore if it is time that we decide to heal the issue two-way by addressing the emotional needs of men and women alike. We started dealing with the terms like women empowerment, gender equality (and others) in the mid-20th century to challenge the existing power structures across various human interaction based groups, from corporations to families. These women centric terms have been abused by the rhetorical use of such uplifting concepts which could not grow and flourish beyond concept papers and heightened selective reasoning. We are trying hard to empower, enrich, include and (ironically) establish women as a concept. The larger question that should have been asked then (thanks to our poor, skewed and convenient application of these revolutionary concepts) and now, is that why were women (along with their concerns) not a part of the thought process when we were shaping our modern lives and the aligned way of thinking.