Economic Independence is the Liberating Factor for Women: Shri Karti P Chidambaram

1st March 2011 - Eves Times

Karti Chidambaram is not a maverick, but indeed he is contemporary, with his feet firmly planted in the roots of emerging India and his sights directed toward a radiant future, just as every thinking person believes. Women have far more opportunities today than ever before. I had an occasion to go to a corporation school and speak to the students recently.  I told them, 'I am sure that many motivational speakers who might have visited your school might have told you that you have great role models like Indira Gandhi, Jayalalitha, Mayavati, or Kalpana Chawla for you to emulate. However, these people are not really your role models.' I then asked them how many of their mothers had finished school. About ten hands rose up. I asked them how many children's grandmother had finished school. No hand was raised. At the age of thirteen   they have beaten two generations. I told them, 'At thirteen you are all more educated than your mothers and grandmothers. You are your own role models.' Today, the real revolution is happening in women's education. If more and more women, especially rural women get educated, the society will be transformed remarkably. Things are changing. At the same time new opportunities are coming up. Moreover, traditional practices are also at war with modern developments. Today, women are more vocal. They don't want to be passive partners. They don't want to be subjugated by their fathers, brothers, husband and sons. They are raising their voices more because they are becoming economically independent. Women's education that provides opportunities for personal income of women is the most liberating factor for them. It has been the practice to tell a woman that she has to constantly depend on her father when she is growing up and before she gets married, on her brother; after marriage on her husband and after the husband is gone, on her son. She is constantly dependant on a man for her existence and survival. I think if a woman is able to break out of this shackle and maintain herself and her dignity, by being economically independent that will be more liberating. Today, women have the opportunity to get liberated in that kind of way. It is obviously creating some tension in a traditionally male-dominated society. This tension will help them. I also think this tension will ease up and women will come into their own. Eventually, women's empowerment lies in the fact that they must be economically independent and not depend on  men. There are complaints in certain quarters that relationship problems have arisen because women are more outspoken. I think it is too far-fetched to think that women have not had relationship problems since time immemorial. It is a myth to think that fifteen years ago or even earlier man and woman had an ideal relationship. I think women were not more vocal then. Probably the woman did not complain so much and she put up with her man. Now she is complaining and that is why it is coming out in the open. Let us not suddenly think that in 2008 women and men are not having good relationships. Are you trying to say that hundred years ago men were perfect and they were having perfect relationship with their wives? It is unbelievable. Men was always doing what they wanted to do; women were just too submissive and the society did not allow them to speak; so they kept quiet.  Don't tell me that everybody's grandmother had a perfect marriage.  I don't think so. Man was doing what he wanted to do.  Women were not speaking up. Today women are speaking up. They are economically independent and they are able to raise their voice about what he is doing. Eventually, the woman will come to be accepted for what she is, as a thinking person, with her own dignity, desires, ambitions and as a valuable contributor to the progress of the family, society and the world at large. That will define the true success of women. The day is not too far off for women to achieve this success.