'Your first child is a girl? Don't worry, you can always try for another child and I am sure it will be a boy.'
'Whatever it is, it's only a boy who will carry forward the family name. A girl always belongs to some other family. '
These are things we still hear, in this century, not only in uneducated households, but also the so-called educated, 'modern' households. Those households that purport to be all for gender equality and equal rights for women, still bear these kind of notions about a boy and a girl child.
Today is Women's Day and already there have been many videos and ads talking about Women Empowerment and freedom for women. But for all their good intentions (or not), most of them have always seemed to me, paying lip-service to the issue, rather than actually address it.
Gender disparity and its consequences are not issues which we can be tackled in such a manner, through few minutes videos. Nor does it make it possible to understand the effect of it.
But there is one Pakistani show, Zindagi Gulzhar Hai, dealing with the concept of whether a girl child is a burden or blessing, which did a phenomenal job of understanding what it does to a child, to be rejected by her father because of her gender. She neither gets the emotional nor financial support from her father, of which she is due. She is forced to pave her own path, amidst too many hardships and struggles, to achieve her dream of becoming a self-reliant and independent person.
And yes, one can argue that, it would have made her a completely confident and courageous person; it did. But what made the show stand-out is how admirably it managed to capture the other facets of this 'confident' person. The facet, where she is afraid to relinquish some control of herself, to her husband, when she gets married. She is not able to accept money from him, when he tries to fulfill his duties, as he perceives it to be, as her husband. She is afraid to completely let down her emotional guard with him.
There is this marvelous scene, where she is so afraid, when she learns that she is pregnant. She is not afraid because she is pregnant; she is afraid because she fears her husband also might leave her in case she gives birth to a girl child. That too, neither the poor fellow nor his parents ever hint about such a thing.
This feeling of her is multiplied when she finds out that during a scan that she is going to be a mother of twin girls. A person may argue that, her being a woman and also having achieved all that she did, without a father's support, should actually feel happy that she is going to have girls.
But what actually happens is that, years of her insecurity of not being enough for her father, years of facing hardship because she is not a boy, years of seeing her mom struggling as a single- mother just because she couldn't give birth to boys, have taken a toll on her self-worth as a person and also as a woman.
For years, it has been pointed out to her, subtly and not-so-subtly, that she is below the chain because of her gender. And when she hears this news, she is forced to confront her own pent-up and suppressed fears and insecurities.
An act of neglect/ disparity, however small or insignificant it may seem to others, causes a significant amount of impact on a person's psyche. It forms the kind of person they end up becoming.
It is definitely true that we, as a society, have finally started questioning the status-quo and acknowledging that women should be given their due. But it is as much true that, there are still small words/acts of gender disparity that still pervades the society and our culture.
It's not just enough to acknowledge that things have been unfair. It is equally important to take that step forward, to check ourselves on our intentional and unintentional moments of disparity - be it by words, thoughts or deeds. And not just during March, but on all days of all months. Be the change you want there to be!
