A nation’s condition is reflected by the status of its women. A perfect hole is actually a combination of two holes ‘men and women’. Strength lies in their union and weakness lies in their separation. Women and men complete each other. No nation can get progress if it leaves half of its population behind the walls of home, so investing in women should be critical to world foreign policy.
In most of the societies where religious norms and values are more powerful, they hold their silence during the service, or the mass as set by their religions. The preachers and the religious leaders are predominantly men, so the women have to obey what men set for them. In different institutions, the influx of women doesn’t discredit men to achieve higher regard, respect, more leadership roles, more tasks and more activities. Men dominate in all the meaningful professions like farming, machineries, IT, engineering and even the banking sector.
The balanced comparison of patriarchy and feminism is key to understand the women role in society. In patriarchy, men have strong control and command over women. They have the power of decision making regarding any of the issue at public and private sphere. Male has the responsibility of disciplined family regulations, socio-economic security and protect their families from all kinds of threats. The perception of male existence in our society is considered as a sound security. If a woman goes to the market with her son age 6, there is sense of security in her mind because she is with a male. This is just because of nurturing.
On the other hand, feminism talks about the advocacy of the equal rights of the women with the men in all spheres of life. Yes, no doubt in it, women need equal rights to spend a full fledge life with freedom. Her social status and prestige are related to her achievement, but her achievement is always associated with men. This isn’t fair . A woman’s achievement and her role must be recognised. This is really a perplexing dilemma of the society that women’s activities are given less credit. They always have to follow the timetable whenever they are with their friends or relatives because their household and domestic responsibilities wait for them. Women are considered at fault if their male partners exhibit any kind of deviant behaviour in society. So, they have to bear the socio-domestic violence. Therefore, feminist movements are at peak in the world now a day.
Respecting women in our society should be the ultimate objective
Pakistani society has drawn a line when it comes to the roles of wives and husbands. Husband’s role is to sweat out for butter or livelihood whereas women are considered to manage domestic and household work. Women’s household is always unpaid in our society. This is again alarming that why we always measure the services in rupees rather in measuring in social wealth. Women’s role was defined in the pre- industrial period of human history. Women were enslaved in the primitive communism by attracting them towards the ‘gold’. No woman has ever thought that gold chain of neck reflects the snare, bangles of hands reflect the handcuff, and anklet is the representation of shackles around the feet. This is really important for today’s women to just realise that what strategy men have adopted to make them slave. The women around the world are still loved the gold and its ornaments. This is real form of slavery.
The Christians missionaries were afraid of women’s intellectualpotentials, so they had destroyed all the written work of the women and killed thousandsof intellectual women almost 1600 years ago. These were actually the methods and strategies which were adopted to enslave the women.
There is a perception in today’s world that women are mentally and physically weak. But history tells that women were never mentally and physically weak, as even they fought wars. This perception was built intentionally to simply enslave them.
Pakistani society is based on patriarchy and here the women have less freedom to do the things by her will. The ultimate decisions are made by the males of the families. Women are oppressed and suppressed in many aspects of the life, but they have given respect and regards in some other ways. In our society, the whole respect of the family belongs to the women. Women’s character determined the respect of family.
In our society, all women areworking but only a few are salaried. They are treated unequal in all spheres of life e.g.the working women get 16 % less income than men in the same profession, they are underrepresented in government sector, are the minorities in executives’ suits, and are also minorities in media and technical sectors. They have more household burden, and are more likely be the victim of human trafficking. Sadly,they even face domestic violence, rape and harassment.
One in every four women in the world has to face the early marriage. It is notable that six out of ten of the world’s poorest people are women.It’s a stigma for the society that women areobjectified. When a woman is taken as just the show piece, their power to become a leader is stolen. But women should also realise that why the people are giving them importance; is it due to work or their physical appearance? All women should remember one thing that the day when they realise that there is much more than a male’s attention in life, they’ll succeeded.
Respecting women in our society should be the ultimate objective. People just need to reach their heart and soul with appreciation and respect for their inner beauty. Just remember that soul and heart are always more important than the package. Women are the best and the greatest gift of God and it is mandatory to cherish and protect them.Men must treat women equally.
One must remember that men build a house but it’s women who make it a home.
The writer is PhD scholar in Media and Crime, CSS coach and author of different books on international relations, criminology and gender studies
Published in Daily Times, March 10th 2019.