What if a large part of your life was determined when it started. I am not talking of something random as fate. This is a socially enforced stigma that comes with your gender. Doesn't your blood boil at such a designed mal-conduct?
You can not wake up one fine morning and say it's over. Let's all be equal over the land these sunrays reach, and so shall it be. We must dig deep into the circumstances that have brought us here and decide how to proceed.
Come to think of it, even in Scandinavian countries, which have established equal opportunities to a greater extent for a sufficiently observable period. There are still occupations that are gender skewed. This often brings us to the primary arguments we started with, has our biological evolution made specific sexes more capable in certain jobs. Are we trying to outdo what is biologically ingrained?
You can not wake up one fine morning and say it's over. Let's all be equal over the land these sunrays reach, and so shall it be. We must dig deep into the circumstances that have brought us here and decide how to proceed.
History :
Like all arguments stretched, let's find some history with our ancestors. Although many hunters made the probability of a fulfilling dinner higher, at one point in time, our ancestors decided to specialise. One part of the head was to be a "hunter" and the other "gatherer". This is where biology played an important role. Mainly because one of the sexes was far too necessary for continuing the human race, later months of pregnancy and natal care forced half of the population to have a sedentary life. Thus the females were chosen to be the gatherers. This gave rise to evolutionary traits that were enforced over time.
Now fast thousand years. For a large part of human history, we were in active warfare. A wasteful activity which not only killed a lot of us but preferred to keep only the healthiest alive. And until the major world wars, the armies were primarily men. This not only did skew the political, economic and sociological dominance. But never the biological.
But things did change with the industrial revolution. Machines had taken over human capabilities; you now could not beat them in strength, speed or accuracy. And that is when we shifted to a more extensive human involvement: trade and business.
This is the greatest equaliser; with the need for strength and speed went, mental capability became the yardstick of human excellence, and men stood on an equal footing with women, except for centuries of acquired dominance.
Waves of feminism:
That's all the history I would have liked to speak. Let's look at how empowerment actually occurs. If we talk of equality, there are there major equalising options.
- equality of rights
- equality of opportunity
- equality of outcome
Equality of rights sounds so rudimentary it is hard to imagine a society without it. In fact, the equality of rights institutionally recognises a group or identity as a part of society. This is a part which is most important for community members to ensure.
Equality of opportunity does come into place once rights are ensured. Because requests only offer protection from abuse, the group needs to be equipped with instruments that empower them and make them agencies of their own. This is where the independence of the group begins.
Equality of outcome, however, is the grade sheet of the society. Once the equality of opportunity is established, it must consequently flow to equal results. Some tweaking might be necessary, but only with the rudimentary process. Also, any deviation from equal results after equal; opportunity might be a glaring question for us? Is our basic assumption wrong in the first place?
Because playing around with the outcome is the murder of any systematic process.
The curious case with the first wave
The first waves of feminism started with the suffragette. When women took to the streets demanding the right to vote. One of the driving reasons for these movements was the World War. Since men became increasingly occupied with the army, many jobs opened up for women. Granting them to glance at what was earlier a man's workplace.
But, in all true sense, this was the beginning of the dawn of equality of the sexes. It seems outrageous that it had to take nearly 2 millenniums for us to bring half of our kind under the shelter of law. But that was a journey half done. In countries like India, which borrowed aspects of the suffragette, a law exists in the paper, practised in many significant places. But one must actually question if it's of any actual relevance.
Although women have the power to vote, pockets of the country still exist where this right needs to provide the fundamental dignity of existence. That must be the first step for anyone who claims to be a human. And then there are places where women stand deprived of the right to vote. I could have delved into a historical mapping of such a society, but history must not justify discrimination.
The fight for equal opportunity
Opportunity is more intricate and finely threaded than rights. It is glaringly visible when rights are violated, but the lack of opportunity can be concealed well. Consider this: although a right to education exists for children in India, more girls must pass matriculation. Apart from social and historical connotations, there was an uncommon reason behind this: - the lack of TOILETS. Because of their menstrual health, girls after puberty needed appropriate hygiene considerations, which needed to be improved in a large percentage of the government school. This prevented girls from attending school for a week every month and left behind a psychological impact.
This is, however, a more straightforward situation since the obstruction to opportunity is physical. There is a prominent case in which this hindrance is mental. For example, in conservative parts of the country, people are more than willing to have their daughters complete higher education, but only a few approve of them doing jobs. Although it would seem a vast loss of human resources to the country and no apparent reason to pursue such a thought, this is highly prevalent.
Establishing equal opportunity is, in every term, a challenging task for society. And here, the balance between external and internal impetus is crucial. External momentum might cause distorted mental perceptions, as the second case illustrates.
The dilemma of equal outcome:
One proven way to create equal opportunity is to give women the instrument and agency of power. For example, in cases where women make it to the top management, cases of sexual harassment a the workplace drop significantly. Without actually conceding power, it's impossible to make the system self-sustaining.
But there is a catch here. Given that equal opportunity (physical and mental) are available to both sexes, what prevents equality in the outcome?
The second issue that comes to play here is the use of data, often in all gender-related studies. Researchers have mainly analysed how specific socio-economic parameters like wage, education, and assets vary with gender. This does prove a CORRELATION but not a CAUSALITY. What's dangerous is that it often blinds us from the actual cause?