We need to wage war against patriarchal society

“You can judge a nation, and how successful it will be, based on how it treats its women and its girls” — Barack Obama

I wonder sometimes, why eve-teasing, dowry, domestic violence, acid attacks, rapes and gender bias are so common issues. Is it just these individual criminals or there’s more to this problem. Instinct says that when level of education is growing then no. of such issues should go down. But it’s not happening.

I had been thinking about it for long, have talked to elders, younger people and have been taking hints from top NGOs working on this issue, what I have understood is that it cannot be just solved by education, it’s much more rooted in each one of us as a society. It’s rooted in our mindset, which has been propagating down the generations since long.

Harsh truth and the root cause is that we are and have been a patriarchal society.

What is patriarchal society

It’s a system where men are in authority over women in all aspects of society. We think men do the tough job and they run the house or the country or the world. Without men, it’s not possible to run the show. men are considered to be the superior species.

Women are looked upon as an honor of the family but a liability and inferior to men. The primary job of a woman as seen since inception of basic societal structure is to give birth and raise kids. Logic explained by many had been that only women can do so, hence women can’t do two important job at the same time raising kids and running house. So women became dependent on men for running the house. Also the benefits of women’s job cannot be quantified objectively.

So all in all, a boy is seen as a much better investment than a girl.

Man vs Woman

Most of us do not particularly wish anything bad for women. But we’re more motivated by fear than anything else. When things go bad, decision involves compromise and when we have to make a choice between woman and man it’s mostly going to be a sacrifice at a woman’s end because we want to save someone who’s much needed to run the show.

When some guy teases a girl, it is considered bad but what can we do about hormones. When a husband beats the wife, as a society we’re more interested in questions like “Did she do something wrong?” “Could it have been avoided by the woman?” We look for reasons to justify what men does and avoid any conflict.

In this society most of the people, consciously or sub-consciously give this message to everyone around them that “Man are superior”. And this propagates further down the generations. And this is how it has been.

This is how things work! Until you question!

The honor and injustice

So first we discriminate and then because women are considered to be the honor of the family, we expect a lot from women to maintain our honor, reputation. More problems to women. And then we wonder what is wrong with the society.

Now I do not like the idea of patriarchy at all, neither the idea of being motivated by fear or the idea of honor. There are many others like me.

So how can we change this?

Now we can all preach things like women should be empowered, educated etc. Yes we need to do that but let me tell you solving this complete problem is easier said than done, it’s a vicious circle. We need to hit the root cause.

We need a systematic, organized movement to wage war against patriarchal society!

And this war is not going to have definite milestones or big wins. It is going to be about sum of many small wins and it is going to be a long haul. Not one but we all have to engage and contribute to this fight.

We cannot just leave such world for the next generation. We have to be little aware and proactive.

Here’s what we all can do. Look hard for someone who’s not doing justice to their daughters, daughter-in-law, wife, mothers. If you find one, however small the issue looks like, tell them “You’re doing it wrong”. Don’t leave it on tomorrow, pick the phone and do that right now. It takes a minute only.

If we all start doing that, our echo can just change the mindset that this is not how things work, then we can move on to next step how things should work.

While doing that don’t forget that change starts with you.