An Opportunity
The #metoo conversation will be incomplete without seeing what the current model of “growth and development” is doing to us.
If more empowered girls only end up creating more consumers, they will join in the havoc being wrecked on the planet.
Maybe a demand will come from some corner to monetise parenting. If paid for parenting, women will have greater economic power and freedom after all.
And the busy-ness at the workplace (which may eventually start paying equally) will mean much lesser time to tend to our relationships and a challenge in dividing both housework and parenting responsibilities.
Capitalism will very happily co-opt anything that comes its way. Not only will we see more philanthropy being directed towards gender issues but also more products and services appealing to women.
But it will rob us of the time and vitality required for the healing that needs to happen. We won’t be able to have the conversations that matter (about gender), to have the space for forgiveness, grieving and reconciliation.
All of these are slow processes, they take time. With our schooling of instant gratification we risk getting into a reactive cycle very easily, rather than understanding the deeper processes and structures at play.
What has been done to women over these centuries has also started happening to our planet, our rivers and our forests in different ways.
At the root of it all is the same de-humanization, the same feeling of disconnection, the same greed for power and control, the same fear of losing some ‘territory’ and the same old story of self-importance.
Let’s use this opportunity to go deeper to the roots. Let’s give this the time it needs and deserves. Let’s start unplugging from this machine that will keep us in a perpetual state of consumption, instant gratification and endless desire.
