Gender Inequality and Constitutional Right for Women to Fight It..!!!

EMPOWER WOMEN, EMPOWER WORLD

Introduction

India is the developing country almost in every aspect. India is called as the land of unity in diversity. Every one lives with unity and brotherhood. But somewhere India lacks gender equality. Even today there is a narrow mindedness of the people regarding the gender equality. Society don’t accept the girl child in some parts of the country being rich in cultures and traditions. In the population of one billion humans gender matter the most to us. Though we have move forward but in some parts of the country society don’t consider male and female being equal. The perception of the society is if one is the male he is only meant for doing miscellaneous work and if one is the female she is only meant for doing the household chores. She is bound to be in the four walls of the house no matter what. Everyone has the right to freedom or liberty but it does not seem like that. Females are being suppressed under this male dominated society. Somewhere the country lacks the ratio of females too. The girl child is not being allowed to come out of the womb of the mothers. They are being killed inside it. The girls out in the society are not allowed to study or make a move of their own regarding their careers or their marriages. Basically females are being run by the males of the society just like a puppet. They are being harassed or molested or raped in the streets and being blamed for wearing short clothes or behaving like a brave warrior.

If we see the economic sector women are being discriminated there also which led to the involvement of feminists and reformists for fighting for equal pay. Being a patriarchal society women are being deprived of getting the equal shares in the property because it is believed that men are the ones who actually carry their generation forward and earn bread and butter for the family, while women would just sustain upon the money earned by men. There are various schemes and programmes launched by the government in order to give equal opportunities to the men and women. Even though there have been reforms and number of women have increased in jobs but still they lag behind in the total percentage of jobs. Today there has been increase in the number of women in corporate sectors. In the contemporary times, women have been actively involved in the economic activities and labour force but sadly there is a huge wage gap between men and women.

It is considered that educating a girl child is the bad investment as she is bound to get marry and leave her father’s house. That is why parents if they want to educate the girl child they only educate her till 10+2 and then either get her marry or make her sit at home and learn or do the household works because if she doesn’t know household chores then nobody will ready to marry her and this will be the insult of the parents that their girl is in the age of marriage and she is sitting at home idle and not getting any boy. without having good education women are found lacking in present day’s demanding job skills; whereas, each year’s High School and 10+2 standard results show that girls are always doing better than boys. This shows that parents are not spending much after 10+2 standard on girl child and that’s why they lack in job market. Every husband looks for the female doctor for his wife during her pregnancy but he rarely finds the female doctor because of the lack of education to the girl child or a girl child is not allowed to go for higher studies. On the one hand we worship the goddesses but on the other hand we raise hand on women and make them feel deprive physically and mentally. Some females even afraid of complaining regarding the domestic violence or harassment or molestation just with the fear that she has to suffer the insult of the people her parents and she being thrown out of the society and with that the people who commit such type of crimes dare more to do without having any fear of the police or society.

Constitutional Right

Looking towards the constitutional rights for the women there is much development and many provisions were made regarding the women rights. There are constitutional rights for women. Constitutional rights for women pen down in the part third which talks about the fundamental rights of the Indian constitution includes the following articles:

• Article 15(1) talks about no discrimination against the citizen on the ground of sex.
• Article 15(3) talks about the affirmative discrimination in the favour of women.
• Article 23(1) talks about the prohibition of human trafficking and forced labour.
• Article 39(a) talks about securing equal rights to an adequate of means of livelihood among men and women.
• Article 39(d) talks about the equal pay to men and women at work places.
• Article 39(e) talks about no abuse of health and strength of women workers
• Article 42 talks about the provision for securing humane condition of work and maternity relief.
• Article 51-A(e) talks about the duty of every citizen to renounce the practice of derogatory to the dignity of women.
• Article 243-D (3) talks about the filling of one-third of total no. of seats by direct election in every panchayat shall reserve for the women.
• Article 243-D (4) talks about the One-third of the total number of offices of chairpersons in the Panchayats at each level shall be reserved for women 
• Article 243-T (3) talks about the One-third of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election in every Municipality shall be reserved for women.
• Article 243-T (4) talks about The offices of chairpersons in the Municipalities shall be reserved for women in such manner as the State Legislature may provide.

The above mentioned constitutional rights of the women make women more empowered and independent.

Feminism

The feminist movement or feminism or women’s movement is a series of political campaigns for reforms on issued such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence. There were four waves of feminism. The first wave was the fight of right to vote and to gain the political power. It was also called as the” suffrage movement”. The second wave was for the fight for equal rights for women in all works of life weather social, reproductive, legal or employment related. The third wave was the concern of women’s right to contest for political office or to control their lives and bodies to abolish the gender-role stereotypes. The fourth wave was the cultural rights for women that was not allowed to them to enjoy in the past years.

Thus, women in contemporary world are empowering themselves and reaching to the heights and taking their countries too. Indian women Achievers such as Anandibai Gopalrao Joshi the first Indian physician, Roshni Sharma the first Indian woman to ride motorbike from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Mother Teresa the first Indian woman to win Nobel Peace Prize, Indira Gandhi the first woman prime minister of India was named as the iron lady, kalpana Chawla the first Indian woman who reached space, Kiran Bedi the first woman officer of India and so on. Women has always been a special part respect her respect the country.