The issue of women’s liberation and
empowerment has become a seminal topic in almost all discourses. The 20th
century has germinated the seeds of women’s cause that were sown a century or
two back to full growth. Women gained suffrage, equal pay rights,
reproductive rights, education and a lot more, and still a lot remains to be
achieved.
We’ve come off our stereotyped roles, and we have been relentlessly trying to push the social margins further and further. For independent women like you and me, women’s empowerment and liberation is our cornerstone. So, every once in a while my girlfriends and I deliberate over such movements like ‘no-shave armpits’ and ‘free the nipple’, and join a few others to show our solidarity.
But then one day I met three middle-aged women on a trip to Agra. They were homemakers who enjoyed their dependence and loved to dominate the measured world of 2BHK. But now that their husbands have withered and children have moved out and need their care little, they decided to enjoy their lives travelling. This was their first trip alone and that they were nervous would be the least to say. I felt piteously sorry for them who have been now become useless to their children and husbands. I felt terribly sorry for them who had clipped their wings early on in their lives and had never ventured outside the protective male gaze. And so, while I pitied them, one of them caught my tone and remarked, ‘It is by choice that I am a homemaker. I chose to lead this life.’ Soon, I realized how horribly ignorant I was! I wondered how vainly liberated did I feel against my mother who chose a life for herself – to have a family and not to live alone in an unknown city for employment? How much powerful do the sons and husbands feel when they queue up a pre-paid taxi booth and ask the women to stand under shade with the luggage? These same women travelling alone does all of that and may be much more!
I realize how vain I was. My myopic vision prevented me from realizing that feminism is not in pitying women in a situation which you don’t find favourable. It is in realizing and acknowledging her choice, her will and above all her ability to lead her own life in her own terms. My mother is a homemaker and she chooses to spend her life travelling because it is what she wants to, not what she is left to do!
