Changing Balance of Power

Changing Balance Of Power

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, said, ‘You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women’.   And very true, the position a woman holds in a country itself decides the progress of the country. With evolving time Indian woman has surely adopted a major role in the modern society and what has happened is that the comprehensive “identity” of the Indian woman has changed overtime.

India has different complications that put the development of women in a completely altered context than their Western counterparts. Although the key targets remain similar: improvement of health care, education and job opportunities in order to gain equality between men and women in the various settings of public society, the workplace, the school yard and – possibly the most fundamental setting of all – the home. Women are striving to be independent on the equal level of men. The additional complexities that the women of India must also challenge are the caste system, the heavy religious customs, older and more traditional roles of the sexes, as well as the even stronger power that men hold in India. The status was at one time accepted, but with the Western women’s revolution and perception, the role is slowly succeeding in its development through both independent groups of women and national and worldwide organizations based on the goal of gaining equality. They have all accomplished much, but have yet to overthrow the male dominated society. And looking at the current scenario one can easily make out that the Indian woman hold some of the most important position in the country as well outside that.

One of the most enduring clichés about India is that it is the country of contradictions. Like all clichés, this one too has a grain of truth in it. At the heart of the contradiction stand Indian women: for it is true to say that they are among the most oppressed in the world, and it is equally true to say that...