Where Have All the Women Gone!!

"The number of women on this floor has considerably increased, now you see women everywhere", said Arun"Where?? Among two hundred odd people there are about ten women and you say they are a lot. I'd say we should be fifty percent or more", said Alekhya"Madam, this is no parliament that one can force their way through reservations", laughed Arun. A scene in one of the top multinational companies in the country. Said in crude manner, this actually reflects the problem with our society today. It shows a mirror to the deeply ingrained patriarchy. The numbers also tell the same story. According the national sample survey 9.1 million rural jobs were from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012 with only an increase in 3.5 million jobs in urban India. On a net about 6 million women have stopped working. There have been several analyses (Caravan, TOI) to make sense of these numbers. The major reasons cited are the economic reasons like limited employment opportunities and cultural reasons like patriarchy. Unfortunately in India, the glass ceiling not just exists at the higher corporate levels but also at the grass root levels. “But she doesn’t really have to work. Her husband has a good job”, Said Priya.“ If I were in her position I would never work. I would rather enjoy my leisure” A conversation among two post graduates, probably those who count among the top 5% of the country. This indicates our collective mind set where the income of a woman is only a subsidiary income and is resorted only as a last resort. It is considered to be a sign of affluence and status symbol for the women to not work. A woman would work only if the husband is not earning enough, and only until the family attains a respectable status otherwise the place of the woman is her home. This is the mindset which gets reflected in all the statistics. Now surely, the number of women enrolled in higher education has gone up but unfortunately the education has become a nice to show thing, a good status symbol. So we have more educated women being confined to their homes. While we take no qualms to say that we are arriving as a developed nation, our statistics show a totally different picture. When half of the able population is denied the right to work, how do we as a country expect to progress. Even in pure economic terms it doesn’t make sense.In school when I heard the debates of women empowerment I heard people say now women are pilots, army personnel, there is no looking back anymore. I imagined by the time I would grow I would see a world where there is no difference between a man and a woman. But here I am fifteen years from that day, still listening to the same debate, same hopeful arguments on one side and statistics pointing to the opposite end. World for sure seems to have changed, but for better I doubt.  If we just close our eyes for a few years and let things happen the way they are happening, the day wouldn't be too far when we'll all have to wonder "Where have all the women gone??".