it is costly to be a woman

IT IS COSTLY TO BE A WOMAN : A THOUGHT

It is not a new thing to hear loud cries of gender inequality, female discrimination. I would not like to dwelve on any particular case or quote glaring worrisome numbers here as I am in no didactic mood.
Myriad ideas strike my mind as I pen down this note. While conversation during a panel discussion on female foeticide, an innovative idea comes across ‘It is costly to be a woman!”
This statement is affirmed with huge reverence as its strikes the root of all women issues around. A woman has to perform different roles at different stages. The expectations are colossal. Right from the shoes of timid daughter, to obedient adolescent girl, to faithful wife, to meticulous professional, to caring grand mother, a woman has to strive it all.
She is dubbed as wicked, base, immoral, sinful, vile (add many more, if you wish, as atrocities against her does not cease) once she tries to do away with the status- quo which breeds an inferior place for her.
While glancing at frightening facts, across reams in the media, which volumes about gender inequality like female foeticide, persistence of dowry, inadequate representation to women in jobs and government, violence in multifarious form ranging from domestic to psychological. There is no scope for blame game here. The constructivist turn, that the ‘world is a creation of our ideas’, thus we have been perceiving the world the way dominant idea portrays it : women as feeble, weak, incapable, thus marks inequality. Aristotle held inequality would lead to a revolution, so let us begin. The society treated us unequally, we will ask for a change, not in a destitute manner of letting society convey equal status on us, but in a new thought ‘it is costly to be a woman!’
Our tender needs cannot be looked after by men folk. Holism strikes here, our world as entity has priority over its elements. It is a deontological ethic which asks us to be good, do duty to what is right, irrespective of end. What we need to do away is what Sartre held, ‘Mauvaise Foi’, a self deception in which one attempt to evade one’s freedom by denying one’s being-for-itself in favor of the being-in-itself of an object. It can be simply put as ‘sui generis’, literally of its own kind , unique.
We need to get out of solipsism, ironically whose most glaring example is, not speaking out the atrocities committed on you because you are woman. Let us begin by highlighting the way society has ill-treated us, in spite of our great contributions in sustaining the society. We have made way for stability in society, polity, economy by being good daughter mother, wife, sister, professional. This altruism will continue, just because the cost of woman cannot be borne does not mean nihilism form our side. The inherent values of care, regard, warmth, tenderness, affection are too exorbitant to ask from a gendered society.
Amna Mirza