Jyoti Shekar

All of us face challenges from time to time, be it at workplace, at home, or anywhere else. We live in a society, a society which is conditioned to regulate every action of a person. Especially, women.

So, if you are at home, you face pressure to work. If you are at work, you are labelled as ‘not being very homely’. If you are aggressive, people have a problem with it. If you are too docile, then ‘you do not know anything’.

So, what can you do? You can fight it out and win the situation.

When I say a fighter, it does not necessarily mean that we all have to be Kiran Bedi, Sushmita Sen or Malala Yousafzai. We can be fighters in our own little circles. Fighting in this sense does not mean taking up weapons against every individual who crosses your path. It means to effectively resolve difficulties that come in your path, in your own unique way.

Every emotion is useful. Certain times, we need to show our anger to stop injustice. In some places, we need to be a teensy bit jealous to have an ambition for ourselves. Some situations demand that we be patient and quiet. Some situations ask for our tears. If we use our emotions wisely, we can win over any difficulty that may be confronting us.

The point is to channelize your emotions to get the best possible results. In other words, instead of reacting to the problem, we should train our minds to respond to the problem suitably. Whenever faced with any difficulty, we must acknowledge it by either addressing it (making it an external fight) or accepting it (making it an internal fight), instead of ignoring it.

Take an everyday example of who will do the household chores. In many households even today, a working woman, however tired, is expected to put hot food on the table and keep the house in a tidy condition. Most of these women complain that their husbands do not help them. If you simply ignore and continue to do the chores yourself, you will aggravate the problem by feeling agitated/disturbed/sad inside. Alternatively, if you address the problem by confronting in any way, you will perhaps make your husband see the point and rectify his behaviour. Or you can simply accept the situation as being normal and come to terms with doing all that extra work lovingly, without any sort of complaints.

They say we should choose our battles. But we do not always have the luxury of choosing our battles, let us choose our weapons wisely and have the courage to use them.

On the one hand, we have many amazingly inspirational stories of women fighting against the odds to become Presidents, Judges, Astronauts and many other ‘male dominated’ careers. On the other hand, we still have such women in society who are not given basic education, are not allowed out of the house and are generally treated as second class citizens. Where do we draw the line? How do we ensure that such women are brought out of their misery and can live with dignity and respect?

One thing is for sure. We can keep talking about women empowerment and first women world leaders, but unless the women at ground level are treated as human beings with rights of their own, this battle for women is not even half won.

We fight for various aspects of equality. Right to not being objectified, right to equal pay, right to safety and dignity, right to education and many more. But the worst still is the unsafe environment at home. Being unsafe or treated with prejudice at home is far worse that treated as such by strangers outside. Unless we achieve equality at home, there really is no point in fighting outside.

“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It is about changing the way world perceives that strength.” – GD Anderson.

We are not weak, we are not helpless, we are merely taught to adjust, to be patient and not fight back. Change that, and you can win the world.

So all you amazing ladies out there, if you have any such story of struggle or any example of someone fighting against all odds, do share the story with us. This will help umpteen number of women to realise that their situations may not be irreparable and that they can fight it out or rather, deal with it.