Present status of Women in India

 

Women were always treated inferior to Men. India has always been a patriarchal society; here the lineage of a descendant is always inferred from the Father’s side. Male dominance has been almost everywhere in the society. The status of woman in India has been subjected to several changes overtime. We can trace from superiority of men in every phase of our life. When we are born, we have our fathers to decide and look after us, during our teenage years, the responsibilities of our father were shared by the brothers who had to take the whole responsibility of the family after the father, then once we get married we have our life partners to decide everything for us in our married lives, lastly our sons are there in our old age days to look after us and decide for us. To a very large extent, lives of the women of our country has always been decided and controlled by the men who are present in their lives. The women were just relegated to the household work, and made to submit to the male-dominated patriarchal society, that has always been prevalent in our country. Women, in the early ages, were very educated but also suffered from the evils of society. Some open-minded citizens like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and others have contributed a lot to the wellbeing of women. Even after it, they have been treated badly and unequally to men since a long time. Social evils such as sati-system, dowry, child marriage, and female infanticide were widely practised in the early ages. Indian women, who fought equally with the men of our nation in the nationalist struggle, were never given that free public space. They became homemakers, and majorly worked with all their heart and soul to build a strong home to support their husband who were to build the newly independent country. Women were reduced to being second class citizens. They were even restricted 12 to enter religious places but this has been changed with judgements of cases like Sabrimala temple case 1 , Haji Ali Dargah case 2 . However, this scenario is changing with time as now days, women are participating in every sphere of life whether it be social, political or religious. They are no more restricted to be into the houses, stepping out of their comfort zones and creating their own images in the outside world as well. This is the result of empowerment of women that has been achieved by various constitutional provisions, Statutes and acts that aim at empowering women as well as by various governmental policies. Today’s women have achieved success in every sphere of life i.e. education, workplace, movies, singing, writing etc. The modern women is doing even better than the men in the society. They have excelled in every field.Some examples are the girls that are the toppers of senior secondary examinations from past years, Kalpana Chawla in Aerospace, Sarojini Naidu, Indira Gandhi in Politics, Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya in Modelling etc. Men of today also are very understanding towards the women in their lives.