Women’s Day Special: Let Empathy and Courage win over Fear and Insecurities!

‘A woman is a woman’s worst enemy’.

While growing up, such statements were thrown at me left, right and centre. I, being the stubborn version of myself, used to get very agitated at such thought process being imposed upon me and would fight it. I would get angry as to why would women make such statements themselves, shouldn’t we all take a stand for each other at least?

But as I grew up, I realized that it’s much more complicated than that. I’ve always had this war of thoughts brewing inside my head but somehow, there wasn’t enough motivation to put it on paper. Mostly because I have been confused as to what is really the right way to think.

But yesterday, at work, I watched a skit organized by the HR department on unconscious biases towards women at workplaces and it hit me hard. The skit showcased how the common belief is that men are better employees because they have the liberty to stay late hours at work, they don’t have issues like monthly menstruation and cramps, employers don’t have to worry about them getting married and going on maternity thereafter and so on.

While such ideas weren’t much of a revelation to me; I also realized that men aren’t alone in thinking this way. Women are to be blamed equally. While you would expect someone who has been through a lot of troubles in life by virtue of being a woman, to be more open minded to their counterparts; the effect is quite the opposite for a lot of women.

‘I’ve been through the same issues, I sucked it up and dealt with it; you are expected to do the same’.

The lack of empathy is appalling and the acceptance of ‘status-quo’ makes it worse, be it at workplace or otherwise. And then the same women, who are advocates of ‘Suck it up’, go around complaining and building further biases — that men are better to work with, men understand them better, they get along with men better than women! Wonder why?!

When I was in law school, my roommate once remarked in a casual conversation that, ‘No revolution has ever started because of women.’

She said it in a context where all of us girls were trying to fight the consequence of a very common bias towards women: Hostel In-timing Rules! It is a common belief, especially in a country like India, that if you want to keep women safe, lock them up before it gets dark — because that’s when all the bad things happen. The same was the belief of my law school administration, who imposed a Hostel-in time rule where girls weren’t allowed to stay outside the hostel, out in the city, or in university campus, after 9:30 pm.

Many of us were hell-bent on getting this rule eliminated and were trying to fight it by defying the curfew timings, by being outside the hostel after 9.30 pm.

‘Why should boys be allowed outside after 9.30 pm while the girls are locked inside a building?’

The sad part of that protest was that out of around 350–400 women who were locked inside the hostel building every day, there was a turn-around of around 60–65 women outside the hostel, trying to fight for their rights. The rest chose to walk in at 9.30 and stay locked. It was sad that women themselves did not want to fight for their rights. They were either okay with what was happening around them or they were too lazy to make any effort to change things.

In later years, I witnessed similar attitude of women in different situations.

If someone eve-teases you while walking by the road, there were women advising you to not retaliate. It’s not the best thing to retaliate, you should not retort. Because they may pass by today, but if they take offense, they will probably come back tomorrow and do worse. They will retaliate more. Maybe they’ll use physical violence, abduct you and rape you; they’re capable of so much worse that you cannot even imagine!

All girls undergo this fear of the opposite sex, and think that no matter what, fighting back is not an option. Because no matter what you do, it is only going to get worse. If this fear isn’t there, it’s instilled by other women, many of them who claim to be feminists and fight for women’s rights. For majority, taking a step back is the right thing to do.

‘Obviously, it’s justified! What else is one expected to do? Fight back and get raped in return?’

It’s not just the passersby. Many girls endure acts of casual or uncasual sexual violence within their families, by their best of friends, at workplace etc. And they are advised by family and friends and employers to ignore such encounters and go about their life, for the fear of worse happening. Worse being families breaking up, friendships getting ruined, work, career and reputation getting affected etc.

A mother would rather shut her daughter up and give her hundreds of logics as to why she should just ‘forgive and forget’ than take it up with her son/ husband for the fear of her family falling apart, or being divorced or being a single mother. A friend would rather keep mum over her friend being sexually harassed rather than go against a perpetrator who is rich and influential and difficult to win with. An employer would rather point out the flaws in her female employee and discourage her to speak up to save her organization’s market reputation than take a concrete step towards making her office a safe place to work at.

I don’t know to what extent this is justified. The fear is reasonable, but the idea of not fighting what is causing the fear at large, the idea of not looking out for your self-respect, prioritizing other luxuries of life as it’s expected to be, over the self-respect and comfort of fellow women — it is not very appealing to me at least. It is probably the easy thing to do, to ignore and walk past; be it the biases or the violence against women. It still doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

Ignoring and walking past a problem, just so you don’t get into immediate trouble or anticipated further trouble, is not a solution to any problem in the world! When we start choosing the easy options, we’re in a way choosing to adhere to a stringent system (like locked in a building) and demanding equal rights without doing much about it. We may be able to escape the immediate trouble, but we will all be doomed in the long run!

It pinched when my roommate said that this is how it’s always been and that’s why things are the way they are. That no revolution has started because of women and till the time we are comfortable in getting what we get, getting treated how we get treated, not fighting and just being where we are in the supposed hierarchy of human beings; things won’t be much different. Till the time we believe that we deserve better and muster enough nerve to face the problems and really work towards bringing a change, no matter how difficult things get; no revolution will ever take place in future also. Not because of us!

This Women’s day, let’s stop being comfortable. Let’s start supporting our girls and friends and families and employees and help them stand up to injustices.

Let’s raise our voices against the unnecessary rules and regulations imposed on us in the garb of protecting us, let’s oppose such rules and help our sisters who are opposing such rules and leading from the front.

Let’s stop scaring girls willing to fight, of the consequences of retaliating, rather help them prepare better for the retaliation, whenever and however we get a chance.

Let’s be supportive of our daughters and understand them and take down anyone who hurts them. Let’s not tell her to ‘let it go and move on’; let’s tell her to stop and take a stand and fight with her.

Let’s stop telling our women employees to ‘suck it up’ and ‘it’s not such a big deal’. Let’s tell them that ‘we understand’ and help them cope, be it their menstruation, pregnancy or any other women-centric issue.

Let’s focus on making our workplaces safe, let’s not blame the women employees for any mishap, let’s not tell them — ‘everyone will hear about it’ and restrict them to talk about their problems.

Let’s not be enemies to each other, consciously or subconsciously!

Let’s inculcate empathy to understand our sisters and courage to fight/ help them fight this big bad world!

Let this be the first revolution by women!