I am calling it Part 1 as I am sure that unfortunately this is a topic which can not be covered in a single write-up. More importantly, it cannot be covered without getting the opinion directly from the concerned party, "WOMEN".
This first article is inspired by a small story shared by my 12 year old niece, Vaaridhi Agarwal. At school the teacher was discussing the topic of "Women Empowerment" and asked for students to give their own opinion. Vaaridhi got classs clapping for her answer.. Obviously, one of the reasons she wanted to tell me the story :-)
According to Vaaridhi "Women are not considered Equal in India because we marry a girl at 18 saying she is mature enough, while we marry boys at 21." She said she has been thinking about it since she spoke to her father about this while watching TV a few years back. At that time she was explained that girls get smarter earlier, but she was not convinced and she still does not like the idea.
It got me thinking, that we do take some of the things that come as natural (and unfortunately acceptable assumptions) without realizing the inherent conditioning of our mindset.
1. We assume Man shall be elder to Woman in marriage (hence 21 vs 18),
2. Man graduate by 21 and Woman can complete her 12th,
3. Man need to earn, whereas Woman need not earn
I just started googling while writing this and realized that US / UK and Canada have same age for both Man / Woman to get married and it is 18 years.
Fortunately, Modi ji has also announced (March 2022) to bring this age as same for Man and Woman and make it 21 years in India. There is supposedly an intellectual debate going on if this age shall be 18 or 21. That aside, at least considering both as same age looks like a step in the right mindset.
I will be sharing this post with a few friend and invite their stories to share more and try to question my own mindset and preconceived notions which often undermine the true WOMEN EMPOWERMENT.
#womenempowerment #womenequality #womenrights #bettercitizenship #responsibleadults
