The World Is Unfair To Women Everyday! Do We Have The Power To Change Things?

I have recently written about a woman, my close friend, how when she changed herself, the environment around her also changed. We always wait to be our authentic self when the environment around us changes. Little do we know that it is actually the other way around.

Have you ever seen a flower that forces it’s way around a concrete pavement or a concrete wall? The plant is so delicate, and the concrete around it so hard, but it’s resilience is what makes it thrive. Life is like that. We are put in situations and no matter how hard the environment we are put there so we can break the barriers and thrive. Do you have that much of resilience to always look up at the sun and your goals. No matter what it is and believing in the yearnings of your soul?

Well, many of the difficult environments that we are stuck in, we do not even know actually it’s difficult.

Women adjust around people, rules, peer pressure, cutting off any remnant of dreams that might fill their soul because the world has been like that always. No one told them that they come first. That they matter.

Have you ever spoken to someone and that someone never looked up from the screen to listen to what you are saying? Don’t women take these things as negligible because she accepts that the other person has something more important to do than listen to or answer her?

But this is what makes a person feel invisible. How does it feel to be invisible, day in and day out?

If it does not feel good, why do you accept it as something normal?

How does it feel, when you are in a conversation in a group talking important things and when you speak up saying things making sense like the effect of climate change, current politics or anything intellectual, people in the group look surprised. Because aren’t women, especially home makers meant to be dumb, keeping their business to family and home? It does not matter how much education she must have had or no matter how intellectually inclined she is.

Never miss real stories from India's women.

Register Now

How does it feel, when your opinion does not matter? It makes you feel invisible.

Have you ever been criticised, body shamed, or has someone pointed at your character just because you had dreams? Dreams maybe as simple as going on a night out with your girlfriends for one night a week, just because you needed a break from the cares that you go through the whole week.

How does it make you feel? Unloved and misunderstood.

And women face these things every day in their lives. From ‘loved ones’

I have friends who are dentists, architects, civil engineers, who are all adjusting to their environment. All homemakers, all tending to their family with lots of dedication and love. I am not against love or being a homemaker. Without these beautiful warriors at home, the society would run amok without any discipline. Most importantly the world would forget what it’s like to loved and be loved selflessly.

But what about them?

We cannot change the world

Or maybe we can. By being resilient and not giving up on what drives us.

Just like that wildflower that blooms through the pavement. And when it blooms, people tread gently around it because when it blooms, it changes the pavement from just concrete to something that nourishes life, beauty and love.

I hope someone who reads this, an architect, a dentist, a doctor, an artist, a dancer, a baker or any one who has nurtured a dream for most of her life and is on the verge on giving up because of the environment they are in, give yourself the gift of resilience and keep going.

I hope all your dreams come true.

Image source: a still from the film Monsoon Wedding

Comments