My essay that won the first prize in the competition organised by women's cell, IIT Bombay (Word limit was a constraint)

What, in your opinion, constitutes the true empowerment of women?

To try to answer this question, let me first begin by looking at the current state of affairs in the Indian context. Though much has been written and discussed about women empowerment, the topic always remains very relevant which goes on to show that we are nowhere close to the true empowerment of women. What makes me say that? It’s got to do with our belief system, deeply nurtured biases, attitudes and stereotypes built over several centuries. Some of us may claim that we are highly educated and rational and so we no longer give in to the tendency of stereotyping and gender-based discrimination. Let me give you an example to prove this wrong. Imagine being in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore, you see a girl smoking in one of the many IT parks in the city in the smoking area along with tens of other men. Involuntarily, our first reaction is to get judgemental about the ‘character’ of the woman. I must add a disclaimer here that I am in no way advocating smoking among women. My only intention is to point out that what seems perfectly normal when done by men, in many cases, becomes unacceptable when done by women.

The natural first step in women empowerment would be financial independence. This would in fact eliminate a lot of social evils prevalent in today’s society like domestic violence, dowry harassment, female infanticides etc. Many women in India’s villages are subjected to many of these because they are dependants. India boasts of lowest divorce rates in the world but we should actually dig deeper and find out if it is actually because people are committed to their partners or is it because in many cases the woman has no means of livelihood. I wouldn’t be surprised if in many households, it’s the case of the latter. Financial independence would enable women to take control of their lives and determine their own future. It would also eliminate the mentality of looking at women as a liability. If this happens, it would go a long way in reducing cases of dowry, female infanticides etc.

Let us turn our attention to another ‘tool’ for women empowerment which is widely regarded as effective – women’s reservation. I am not referring to the reservation in parliament which is the subject of another debate. I am referring to the single most important factor for women to achieve financial independence viz. education. Prima facie, we’ll be tempted to conclude that women deserve reservation in educational institutions and the low proportion of women in institutions of global repute like IITs and IIMs would only support our belief. But I have always held the belief that such problems of social empowerment or social justice should be targeted at the grassroots level – primary and secondary education. That’s why whenever there is a talk about caste-based/gender based reservation at the graduation and even worse – at the post-graduation level, I am reminded of this adage: “Give a man a fish you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”. I feel that by giving reservation at the graduation and post-graduation level we are essentially doing the former. Another major problem in extending reservation to women in institutions like IITs and IIMs (or any other institution of higher learning for that matter) is the attitude of people who have managed to gain entry into such institutions purely based on merit. Will they feel cheated? Will they be tempted to look down upon their classmates who have gained an ‘easy’ entry into the institution? Will they not start ‘discriminating’ against such people whom they feel don’t rightfully belong there? If such a thing happens, would it not actually defeat the whole purpose of reservation?

I would like to highlight an interesting phenomenon prevalent in institutions like IITs and IIMs in this context. Because of their scarcity, women are highly sought-after by companies during campus recruitment – After all, these companies have to maintain their gender diversity too. This has resulted in almost all the girls in such institutions ending up with attractive job offers. Many boys perceive this as an unfair advantage which girls get. Though this is not entirely inaccurate and in fact in many cases true to a great extent, this has resulted in boys in such institutions entirely discounting the true capabilities of girls i.e. many times boys feel that if a girl succeeds, the fact that she is a girl has played a very significant part in that success because of the concession she gets. This has, in many cases, resulted in men looking at women’s success with a lot of scepticism – a success which they see as a result of the concessions and favours that she has received on different occasions because of being a girl. This is a subtle form of discrimination which I feel is not just restricted to IITs and IIMs and it is not unreasonable to generalise this phenomenon.

To conclude, I would like to highlight two things as being of utmost importance for the true empowerment of women: 1. financial independence for which education is the single biggest enabler 2. Change in mindset of people towards women – i.e. not looking at women as a liability. In fact the first would lead to the second and vice-versa. So in a way it is a reinforcing loop. When we achieve these two things, we would have eradicated many of the social evils that plague today’s India and we would have achieved the true empowerment of women.