Break Free, Fly, Choose

However, there are encouraging signs. Currently, in the Indian IT industry, women form 45 per cent of the total workforce. More women are stepping out and speaking up, demanding and getting education and employment and some semblance of equality. Women earn outside and also slog inside their homes. But it is a choice many of us willingly make.

So, women’s empowerment is neither a myth, nor a fully-achieved reality, but a work in progress. A process that started long ago and far away, but is carried forward each time a woman asserts her rights. My mother had to quit her job to bring up her children. I am managing to balance work and home. Maybe my daughters will have an easier choice, a smoother flight, a safer freedom, and a more equal empowerment. For the betterment of the entire human race – man, woman, transgender – we can all hope

The Bondage to Stereotypes

Down centuries and across cultures, one of the most debilitating bondage that women have had to face is the bondage to stereotypes. As Eve the eternal temptress, or Mary, the selfless nurturer, as Durga, the ten-armed super-force, or Savitri, the unquestioningly devoted wife, men have created the image of their perfect woman and women have always been expected to conform to this straitjacketed stereotype constructed by men. And they still do. Look at the popular television serials and advertisements that sell cars and deodorants through Eve-like femme fatales, or feminine cosmetic products that glorify the most fantastic stereotype of them all – the ‘fair and lovely’ centre of male attention.

As long as popular culture continues to endorse these stereotypes, women will continue to be enslaved by them. And women will liberate themselves financially and politically, only to be disempowered by subtler socio-psychological forces

Power and Violence

Many a times, though, silence is at a disadvantage. Especially since violence is an inescapable ingredient in any struggle for power. One of the most disturbing obstacles to women’s empowerment is the growing trend of violence against women. This violence takes many forms – dowry harassment, bride burning, eve-teasing, sexual harassment at the workplace, honor-killing, marital violence and rape. To each of these victims, women’s empowerment may just be an empty, broken promise. Violence can take other forms, too. It can be self-inflicted, brought upon oneself by peer pressure and social expectations. The notion of ‘beauty’ can be fiercely competitive and mercilessly cruel. There are so many women like the model Isabelle Caro, who died of anorexia and bulimia, to attain or maintain the ideal of ‘beauty’- beauty which always lies in the eyes of the observer, usually male.

Protest through Silence

To know the real status of women’s empowerment in India, we can perhaps consider some figures, especially in our country which has unfortunately always performed poorly in gender-related indices. Indian women typically spend 35 hours per week on household tasks and caring for family-members, as against 4 hours per week put in by men. We can look at faces. Women in India have had their poster-girls and role models. From Indira Gandhi, a couple of decades ago to today’s Sonia-Mayawati-Mamata-Jayalalitha in politics, from Indra Nooyi and Naina Lal Kidwai in the corporate jungle to Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar in the jungles of injustice; famous Indian women achievers do make a long list.

Or perhaps, we can listen to the many silences around us – the silences of the women away from the limelight, away from our own educated, privileged world. Let me share with you my maid’s ‘herstory’. She is seventh-standard pass, abandoned by her husband even though she has two children, and she works from dawn to dusk washing-cleaning-sweeping-mopping to bring up her two children and to look after her mother and sister, who share her destiny of abandonment and subsequent self-sustenance through hard labour. She does not know about any charter of women’s rights, but her gut-instinct makes her refuse to take back her husband when he comes inebriated and wheedling to her door. She displays the power of silence; the silent strength of those who cannot voice their protest

Empowerment’ means ‘to vest with authority, to authorise’. As men have been the ‘authors’ of most texts, since time immemorial, it’s not surprising that women have always got a raw deal in the division of power. Consider The Holy Bible. Naomi Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth, “Though God made Adam from clay, in his own image, Eve is an expendable rib.” Consider the etymology of the word ‘woman’. This Old English word is a compound of wif + man. A part of man, and not much apart from man – that was the woman’s lot. And then there came the three waves of the Women’s Liberation Movement, from the 18th century to the present day. The achievements of women are very much real and hard-won – one of the most noteworthy being women’s suffrage. Indeed, a long journey has been traversed from the ideal state of Aristotle’s Politics, where women, infants and lunatics were denied citizenship rights, but the manifestations of male power are so insidious and entrenched, that we have a long way to go before women’s empowerment becomes as much of a ‘given’ as men’s empowerment has always been.

The reason is simply because India lacks rule of law. You can amend the law as favorable to women as you want but if its not enforceable, then its useless.

I don't think that rapists and molesters are more fearful now than before. They know that if they do their deed and flee to some remote part of India in time, the police will NEVER EVER find them. So women's safety is not guaranteed at all with tough laws.

Another example, dowry was banned by the court many decades ago. So was female foeticide. Does the common citizen even care about the bans? How many people are convicted for violating those laws? Are the statistics showing a positive result for those problems? As long as people don't have the fear of law, India will remain a lawless anarchy.

For the 'for' argument, the only thing that I can think of is Indian spirituality. There are many temples where female figures are worshiped. These matriarchal traditions became extinct in Persian, Arab and Western world but is very much alive in India till today.

That's something that should stay because it is a great heritage for India.

S

Currently a few Islamic countries have the ban imposed, these are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and the Gaza. In 2002 also the “liberal Arabic country” Bahrain has started a debate about banning alcohol.[3]

In the past, the experience of ‘Prohibition’ in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s, when there was a huge black market in alcohol run by a powerful criminal underworld, makes most people very wary of trying to ban alcohol and equalize it with other drugs.

Some countries use a total ban on all types of alcohol; this also includes beer, wine as well as stronger liquor. Other countries (due to tourism and investment) have a special license for foreigners as the state connects the ban mainly to their Islamic heritage.[4]

Is it time to try to solve the alcohol problem through more restrictions and campaigns or is it time for a ban policy?

Alcohol and Religion are the 2 greatest inhibitors of societal evolution. The only reason alcohol is not banned is business interest, as it is more dangerous than most illegal drugs. Alcohol is behind more than half of all violent crimes committed in our crime-ridden country. Alcohol is a major factor in preventing low class-impoverished people from getting ahead in life. Alcohol abuse is responsible for nearly all cases of domestic abuse and broken families. There is no rastional benefit to alcohol

Alcohol should be banned. Alcohol is not something like water, or air that is required to live on this earth. Alcohol consumed in smaller amounts and occasionally is good for health but the majority of people cannot limit their amount of alcohol intake once they have started consuming it. We ordinary people cannot even limit the food intake so how can we limit alcohol intake once we start consuming it. One of the THIRUKURAL (verse of THIRUVALLUVAR,a divine sage of Tamil origin) lays emphasis that every man should be away from habits like drinking,smoking. Drinking spoils not only the individual but also his entire family. It is drunkards who beat their wives unnecessarily because they lose their reasoning power. There is one saying in Tamil 'KUDI KUDIYE KEDUKKUM' meaning drinking ruins your entire family. Hence I wish that government should ban alcohol consumption and consuming alcohol should be treated like a crime just like theft, murder etc. That is the most successful way of protecting our society and hence our country and path towards common good.

Alcohol should be banned since it serves no other purpose than to get people drunk and kill kids. We should BAN Alcohol. 11,000 people are KILLED each year in America just from Alcohol related car crashes. Just recently a teacher and her unborn child were KILLED when a drunk hit them head on.

Alcohol is NOT a right. It serves no other purpose then to get people DRUNK and inebriated and kill innocent families and children.

BAN!