The Changing Role of Women in India
In the past, women have been oppressed to a point where they were treated as a completely different species. They were in a country that seemed to be a dark tunnel with no hope, dreams, or sense of fulfillment. Now, women have been given their natural birthrights, and they are now able to do everything males can do.
Women in India are beginning to follow the direction that the women of the Western world took more than eighty years ago, demanding treatment as human equals. However, it has become more and more evident as the revolution ages that Indian women may have to adapt the Western feminist method to their very traditional and religious culture. India has different complications that put the development of women in a completely altered context than their Western counterparts. Although the key targets remain similar: improvement of health care, education and job opportunities in order to gain equality between men and women in the various settings of public society, the workplace, the school yard and – possibly the most fundamental setting of all – the home. Women are striving to be independent on the equal level of men. The additional complexities that the women of India must also challenge are the caste system, the heavy religious customs, older and more traditional roles of the sexes, as well as the even stronger power that men hold in India. The status was at one time accepted, but with the Western women’s revolution and perception, the role is slowly succeeding in its development through both independent groups of women and national and worldwide organizations based on the goal of gaining equality. They have all accomplished much, but a lot more has to be done, which requires the complete support from the other sex.
No longer do women write books depicting their insecurities and injustices. Now women are writers of Pulitzer Prize winning works and teach aspiring male authors how to be the best they can be. The Indian society is now proud of outstanding women achievers like Kalpana Chawla, Sania Mirza, Barkha Dutt, Shabana Azmi and many more. In a society where it was once unheard of for women to even be educated, women take up the majority of grade school teachers, and many more have blossomed into college professors with Ph D’s and MD’s. As women kept making these advancements to individualism, people have taken notice, and now women are considered better contenders for many jobs, men no longer have the full control they once fabricated. With the achievement of all this, women now have so many opportunities that were once a dream, the tunnel they once envisioned so dark and impassible seems like a stairway to light, to the open society of acceptance and opportunity. The future of women in India looks bright and secure and their role even more important than just being a wife, mother, or daughter.
