Question

article on plight of womens

Answer 1

Women are known as the ‘better half only because without them the family does not get formed. Therefore this apparently respectable looking caption has been given to them. But are they really ‘the better half? Not so, as it is so far as the Indian society is concerned. The Indian womanhood ever from the days of fore — even from the days of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat has remained a pawn to be played with at the male member’s will.


Sita and Draupadi are the two examples so glaring. The one could be sentenced to an ‘Agni Pariksha’ and then to an ‘Exile’ and the other one lost to the opponent as a pawn of the dice. These are examples of such women who are the ideal womanhood. Education for women was a far cry even in the urban society till about the first quarter of this century; though of course, there had been very learned women during the ancient times like Gargi and Maitreyi — but these were exceptions not the rule.


Ever after the freedom struggle of our country got launched women began coming up in the forefront both as partakers in the freedom struggle as also in the field of education. But as compared to men their number remained just negligible. Mostly, home had been treated as the rightful field for women in the Indian Society and the four walls of their house as an area of their functioning.


The kitchen and the maternity room had remained their sole priority and prerogative   to which they seemed to have  been designed and destined.


Only gradually the light began dawning on them and they began to come out and show out. Colleges, even Universities and Institutes for women got started and education at all levels began being imparted to them. There appeared on the national scene political leaders of the like of Sarojini Naidu, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, poetesses of renown like Mahadevj Verma, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, musicians and dancers, professors, even Vice-chancellors and some got appointed as Governors, and judges of the High court and even of the Supreme court.


But with all this scenario of great upliftment apparently visible, the state of the majority of women of the country remained a neglected and an oppressed class. Those who had risen up their percentage was negligible. Even those who got educated  when they got married  and most of them were educated only to be finally married away in good families and to well-placed, grooms - found their lot subservient to their husband’s wishes and whims. If they failed in doing so they suffered  either a neglect or a torture  mental or even physical  and lastly even a divorce   left with a couple of children to be nursed and to be looked after.