1499 Words Essay on women’s liberation movement

With the invention of labour saving machines, robots and electronic gadgets, man’s superiority over women in sheer muscular strength has become meaningless as it is of some consequence only in the gymnasium and sports-stadium. Although there too, women excel men in many athletic fields requiring flexibility and delicacy of movements.

Women have launched organised efforts to prevent all discrimination against them in a male dominated society on grounds of sex and in the field of social, political and economic rights. Since the cause of women’s subservience has been mainly the institution of family under the tyrannical domination of man who controls the purse strings, many advocates of women’s lib have questioned the i continuation of family in the traditional sense.

Indeed, Women’s lib is not going to be content with equal pay for equal work and voting rights; it seeks fundamental and thorough-going changes in the treatment of women in homes, offices, and workplace and at all levels of society. Although the movement is western in origin, it has made waves in the Third World like India too which for the last 100 years has been getting ideas and inspiration from the philosophers and social scientists of the western world.

The painstaking research and field work of anthropologists like Lewis H. Morgan on the ancient society and primitive people, led to certain startling disclosures in the last 19th century. It has discovered that in most primitive tribes woman was the head of the family and the lineage was determined from the mother. Woman was engaged in economic activity of earning a livelihood as much as man. Besides being a loving and caring mother of children, she provided stability and protection to man.

It was much later that man through inter-trial war and exchange of goods acquired and I concentrated both physical and financial power in his hands. Many of the conquered people were converted into slaves who would perform hard physical labour and relieve their owner. The woman, who was an equal partner of man in the field and in the home, was relegated to the secondary position. Woman’s homework lost its significanc compared with man’s work of tending heads of cattle or making tools or implement for earning a livelihood. Housework was private not socially productive work. It deals a great blow to the status of women.

The very origin of the word family indicates the subservient position of womeri ‘Family’ comes from Latin word ‘FAMILIA’ which denotes a social organisation inventei by Romans, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number o slaves. He had the power of life and death over them in Athens, too, the woman wai no better than chief housemaid who lived in quarters inaccessible to visitors. Like salves, she was excluded from citizenship and had no right to vote along with man.

Ever since, female sex has been exploited by male sex early Industrial age brought her no respite. She worked in factory but was paid much lower wage than man for the same amount of work. The sentiments like “woman for the home and man for the world-All else confusion” were voiced by celebrated Victorian poet like Tennyson. Rumbling of discontents against the maltreatment of women were heard in the second half of the 19th century. Women found champions of their rights in the great humanist thinker like J.S. Mill and the great socialist, F.

Engels then emerged a series of social thinkers and political reformers who took upon themselves the arduous task of agitating for women’s rights. But even the democratic Britain was slow to respond. It was only in 1921 that women could get the right to vote in Britain. Slight improvement in the conditions of women activated them to launch more energetic struggle for acquiring equality. A series of movements erupted all over U.S.A. and Europe.

One of the guiding spirits of women’s lib had been the live-in-companion of Jean Paul Sartre, Simon De Bovair. In “The second sex” a systematic and scholarly account of women’s conditions through the ages and the analysis of inequities and handicaps suffered by them in different societies, Simon De Bovair has thoroughly established the rationale of women’s liberation. Like the American Black, the woman has always been exploited and denied opportunity for free development of her personality. This is the reason that we do not find as many great women writers, scholars and scientists as men.

Wherever society has provided substantial opportunities to women they have shown their worth. Russian society liberated the woman from shackles of old customs and provides mass education to female children. As a result, a very large proportion of the work force of Russia consists of women in schools, factories, hospital, in economic, social and political sphere.

More radical among the women-lib agitators want to do away with domestic chores and unwanted pregnancies they have given up wearing skirts and blouses and dress up in shirts and trousers like’ men they have forced the establishment to do away with the nomenclature like chairman and spokesman and want these words to be replaced with chairperson and spokesperson when the subject happens to be a women. In some countries, after child birth, father is given compulsory paternity leave upto 6 months to perform his share of looking after the child and to relieve the mother who, in many cases, is a working woman.

The ideas of Woman liberation have radiated to the Third World countries including India. The founding fathers of Indian constitution were committed to the emancipation and liberation of woman and they made provisions in the Constitution under the chapters of Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy to protect the interests of women. While Fundamental Rights provide that no discrimination in respect of education, profession and civil rights be practiced against women, the Directive Principles lay down certain guidelines for the State to endeavour for emancipation of women (and to ensure their equal pay with men for equal work).

Indian Parliament has enacted legislation to remove many disabilities of women. Women now have equal right with their brothers to inherit the ancestral property. Child-marriages have been abolished by law. Government is also assisting many societies and organisations engaged in empowerment of women. These organisations fight for women in courts to obtain justice for them in the matter of guardianship of their children, maintenance allowance in case of divorce and also to eliminate harassment of women at the hands of their husbands and in-laws.

Although conditions differ from state to state, Indian woman is liberating herself from the confines of home. She has joined the mainstream of humanity. With her intellectual achievements, she has been able to gain a good share of positions in govt- offices, schools, medical profession and diplomatic assignments.
Still in a conservative society like India, the process of women-liberation is very slow.

There are certain professions from which women are still excluded. Although many woman candidates have shown remarkable aptitude for mathematics and engineering, general thinking of society is not in favour of women joining the engineering or technical services. It is sheer prejudice. A large proportion of work force in electronics industry is that of women. With their delicate manual skill, women surpass men in manual operations involved in watch-making, television and radar manufacturing. They are equally good at computers. Still due to social bias against women becoming engineers, many girl students with aptitude for science and computers do not take up the engineering courses.

Women are also excluded from the profession of Taxi-drivers and auto-drivers. The exclusion does not seem reasonable in view of the fact that some women have been working successfully as commercial pilots of Indian Airlines. Even in the Civil Services, where women officers are in a sizeable number, some specific jobs are denied to them. In some states like Punjab and Haryana, woman I.A.S. Officers is generally denied posting as District Collectors.

Women liberation movement in India has still a long way to go. There are still a large number of educated people who can’t allow their women folk to move around without escort. Among high caste Hindus, women are not allowed to engage in agriculture operations even when they cannot afford wage-labour and had to live in semi-starvation conditions for want of food.

Legislation alone will not liberate women from their poor conditions. They have to acquire education and skills to engage in socially productive work. They have to earn economic independence before they can get social equality with men. They suffer from certain age-old handicaps. Social activists and Government have to step up their work for empowerment of women so that equality of women with men becomes a reality and does not remain merely a wishful-thinking.