Rigid thinking and women empowerment

Woman empowerment: first we need to clarify this term what people think about woman empowerment because there is so misapprehension about this term as people unfortunately take it as western agenda. Empowerment is basically strengthening the spiritual, political, economic, social capacities of an individual and it is a multi-dimensional process through which an individual can exercise their rights freely and can enjoy their lives by having control on them . Women empowerment means that women have the right or control over their lives.

People talk and discuss a lot about women empowerment, but when it comes to practical dimension this term seems vague. There are so many reasons behind this phenomena, especially in our country where people are trapped in so called cultural taboos and obviously great misconceptions of religious teachings regarding women’s rights and their status. It has been seen that people like to talk about famous personalities for instance Fatima Jinah, MalalaYousafZai, Shermeen Obaid Chanai and quote their examples to their daughters and sisters, but when their women want to join any professionby their own choiceor want to excel in their field by availing any golden opportunity or if they want to marry with some who they like, they face so much resistance in their way;so the real problem is that people are so diplomatic. They show themselves broadminded but they don’t even know the meaning of broad-mindedness. They claim that they want to see women progressing in different fields but actually they are trapped badly in rigid thinking and prejudices that prevail in our society, in the end they would suggest their women to stay at home.So here is big question mark for all those people who talk a lot about women’s respect, women empowerment, gender equality and women rights.

Women are human beings, they have rights like men but they cannot exercise their rights like men dobecause people don’t want to accept this reality. Our society never raise questions against men’s empowerment but when it comes to women empowerment people take this term as something alien or strange. People especially male chauvinism resist to accept this reality plus our cultural barriers also play a very negative role in this regard.

With the passage of time a positive change has been observed with respect to women empowerment and gender equality as you can see high enrollment of girls in education sector and in professional sectors as well, so this is a green signal for women to come and prove their abilities and talent to masses. Things seems to change due to women education, social media, print media, awareness campaigns , NGOs working on women issues.These factors give hype to women empowerment.Now,its need of time to empower the women as our economy need more potential to grow. In this regard, women can play a vibrant role by engaging themselves in different sectors that boost the economy.

By Aisha Siddique 

Lahore, Pakistan