Research on Indian women's right2

Research on India women’s rights ——based on the documentary India’s Daughter—by：冯伟乾Summery：Since international women’s Day was established on 8 March 1909, women’s rights have been getting more and more social concern. After hundred more years’development, many people think that women have get the equal social status with men or even think that males’ rights are getting invaded and they are calling for man’s rights. However women’s rights are not guaranteed compared to men’s, especially in poor countries. This research takes Iran for an example and aims at alarming people to form the awareness of protecting women. This research goes to 3 main aspects: social phenomenon, reasons and suggestions.Ⅰ.Social phenomenon1.Social status: Generally women can’t do many thingscompared to men;2.Gender imbalance: In India, there are 974 women to 1000men and approximate 2 million baby girls are killed everyyear; almost all the abortions are baby girls.cated rate: 35% of women are illiterate and 71% ofwomen don't go to work.4.Family violence: thousands of women are burnt to death,and the same number to stab, poison and so forth;around 40 thousand women are suffering because of their dowries; the number of suicide has not been counted. 5.In justice laws: women only have half right ofinheritance compared to men; women have more responsibility to crime if they have got involved with.6.Prejudice on single woman: single women areconsidered to be abnormal no matter that they are single because their husbands are gone or they are just single.They will have trouble in many aspects such as renting houses and being the topic of others, even they have a formal job.7.Rape: 2 women are raped every hours in India.Ⅱ. Reasons1.Religion: In India, 94% of Indian believe in Hinduism,which has a doctrine that a person’s soul can be rescued only if the one has a son to do deathbed rite forhim/her. And according to a rule in Hinduism, to women, the only deity in the world is husband, their only job is to be obedient to their husbands, serve their husbands, no matter what shortcomings they have. Women are taught to be good wives and good moms since they are young, the thought is deep in their mind. Hence if the family has got a boy, the wife will be asked to give birth to babies until a boy comes out. And this results in a bad consequence: during the pregnant process, 5.4% of mothers are died, 6.8% of babies are died.Another rule is also a simple of the conventional India culture. Females must not contact to other males except for her close relatives, females should wear veils when they go out.2.Custom: marriage is many women’s pain because of the dowry. Dowry is popular in India. If a women marry her husband without proper dowry, she is likely possible be maltreated by the husband’s family. And the dowry is not only paid at a time, the husband’s family will ask for dowry from time to time. If women’s families fail to afford the dowry, women will also be maltreated, even abused to death is not rare. Thus, considering thefamilies finance, they are more willing to give birth to boys.3.Injustice laws: according to India laws, a male can marry4 females as his wives and he have right to divorce his wives unilaterally without any reason, no matter he is in anger or calm, after he speaks out “talaq” for 3 times, the work is done. However, female can only have one marriage and her divorce requirement should be allowed by the court.Another injustice is obvious, females have the half right of inheritance compared to males, and the ridiculous reason is males is going to feed their families but females can rely on their husbands in the future.cation preference: because daughter is not going to feed her parents according to India culture, thus Indians are not so willing to “invest” their daughters. And they believe that the brightest future to their daughters is to find good husbands. Thus the education rates of women is low in India. (However, an interesting phenomenon is that among the high educated people, females take up a larger proportion compared to males.A possible answer is the families which are willing to givebirth to daughters may hold open-minded thought and have more power in their economy situation, thus they are willing to provide a better circumstance. And because there are too many males, the average financial capacity would be lower than female s’ )5.Prejudice on single women: according to old Indian culture, a wife should accompany her husband to die when the husband’s body is about to be burnt. It is thought to be loyal to her husband. Or the wife should shave her hair twice a month and never going to the gathering parties (ceremonies). Another extreme religious people think that the husband’s death is a punishment to the wife’s sin in her previous life. In a word, a widow’s life is without hope and happiness.6.Rape: 2 women are raped in every hour in India（2013）. The number is the calculated number and the number of victims who conceal the fact is not concluded. In India, rape is the most shameful event that Indian women would choose not to expose it. However, even they are brave enough to expose rape, their future are also miserable. The reason is that the punishment is not powerful enough to sentence the offenders and theywould face heavy pressure from the society instead of sympathy. Rape culture refers to that in a rape case, women should take more responsibility than men, because girl is the original temptation to men.Ⅲ. Suggestions1.Develop economy: Dating back to the history, economyhas always been the most important issue to solve all kinds of the problems, including wars, politics, and so forth. India is not the only country which has the discrimination of women. In the past, the countries all over the world were males-dominated as the countries stayed in feudal age for centuries and females had less social status. Both Europe and American ever existed discrimination, but as the economy grew rapidly, their civilization also grew fast and women’s rights were guaranteed. India is a developing country, when it has stepped into a greater economy (e.g.: China) its civilization can be better.cation:As it is known to all, the thoughts instilledinto to our minds by our closest family and friends when we are young is difficult to eliminate, not to mention thethoughts instilled by the whole society over years in India.One effective way is to enlarge education scale, because the children/teenagers do have stronger power to change this phenomenon compared to adults. Their thoughts have not been solidified by the India culture completely and have chance to shape healthy mind and convey a thought that they should respect women to them. What’s more, education is the most useful tool to defeat the dark side of Indian culture. And education will also bring students open thoughts from all over the world and knowledge to arm themselves that they can have the capital to be against to the pedantic culture and save women from suffering.Words from the documentary:“we have the best culture, but in o ur culture, there is no position for females”; “female mean sex to males only”; “if my daughter has excess behavior with other boy and lose our family’s face, I am sure I will pull her to the farm, pour oil onto her and burn her to death before our whole family ”(words from defense lawyer)“A good girl should not be wondering on the street when it is 9 at night, in terms of rape, girl should take more responsibility.”"Boys and girls are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night, doing wrong things, wearing the wrong clothes."“When being raped, she shouldn't fight back, she should be silent and allow the rape, then they will drop her and only to hit the boy (then she won’t have died)”“A girl should not ta ke her boyfriend outside at night, this event is not only rape, but to illustrate rules to them” (words from the defender)“Will you hang all the rapists? A woman is protected by her husband, if he dies, who will protect her and for whom she will live for? I don’t want to live. My son is young and know nothing, I will strangle him to death, and what else can I do?”(Words from the defender’s wife)Words from the documentary are the valid evidence that they shows the low social status women are at and the inequality they are suffering. And my review is not pinned at rape only, but to concentrate on the “women’s rights” or to say“feminism”Review of India’s Daughter:Years ago when I saw the “women’s rights” and “feminism” I was really disapproval of them, because in my thirteens or my fourteens I thought that males and females are equal originally. When we talked about women’s rights, there is a precondition that we lower women’s position compared to men’s, which highlighted the inequality between males and females. I was glad that this childish thought changed quickly. When I watched the documentary, I even strengthen my thought that we should protect women’s rights. I am convinced that women’s social status are exactly lower than males’.Though the documen tary India’s daughter is an extreme example (there is no doubt that this documentary has reflect a truth), there are other countries discriminate females more or less. Just take an example from the dictionary, the word “man” can refers to both male and people, and “woman” is female only. Women are generally consider as weak, subordinated, passive and carnal. At the same time they are beautiful, kindand merciful—to comfort males. It’s true that not everyone think like that, but the whole society (or it is safer to safe a certain part of people) tend to think like this way, or a female won’t be marked with these labels, such as woman lawyer, woman doctor, woman presenter and so on. It does not only emphasize the nature—woman, but also add the social roles which are consider to be belonged to males to woman. To make it clearer, when we are about to think about repairwoman (doesn’t exist), people will feel weird that they have imagined a woman holding a plier with a dirty tiny wrist.Obviously, the idea th at consider females as “divergent” is the outcome of male-dominated society. The reason is females can’t express themselves as males do—they don’t play the leader roles but subordinate roles. To say more negatively, women don't have the rights to release themselves, they need to obey the rules made by men, their behaviors are effected or limited by men. Thus there is a plot in the documentary that the young wife of the offender makes complaints against laws that laws take away her husband (children’s father, the whole family’s pillar), which seize the significance and chance of life and she even says that she is going to kill her children and herself (to play against the laws).Another example is in ancient China, women were most willing to follow their husbands and sons and bound up their daughters’ feet with cloth since they were young. These examples are most used by feminists.The documentary has recorded many people’s words: Joyti’s parents and friend, criminal, criminal’s family, defense lawyer, government, scholar and so on. Different words do show the same cruel fact: women are indeed for their own voice. From the video, we can learn that women are generally treated as “possession” or “good” to men (at least in India 2013), proved by the words “women a re like flowers, they should be protected in the temple”. I have never imagine that those words come from high educated lawyers. However, from times to times, people blame crime too much on poverty or society instead of thinking of themselves. It is really a tragedy that nor many men or women have realize the inequality and even run to great length to defend this ugly rules. I have ever watched the conversation between Indian university students and American students by accident from the internet, the words the Indians said expressed the inequality everywhere but they still insisted that India was a great country of FREEDOM. I am not attacking their love toIndia, but the phases they used “they should” ”they must” “they won’t” really shocked me. What’s worse, part of them were girls, just like the criminal’s wife, they don’t even try to protect their own rights but to maintain men’s rights. It can thus be seen that how powerful or how horrible a nation belief can be. A religion was set to help the governor or the governing class especially in the self-reliance countries in the history, which spread the thoughts over thousand years and hard to eliminate. It seems that we can’t blame the whole Indians or even the criminals because they are also the victims of history (religion), yet who should pay for the serious social problems? History (religion or poverty) is not an excuse for us to avoid the responsibility we should take because what we have done. Everyone have the mission to push the development process to a better future, not dragging the tail to back.In the end, from my own perspective, this documentary which calls for feminism is appealing the whole society: people should break the set patterns from history, break the rules/boundaries made by men and have/allow women’s own voice. There is no doubt that the thought is of great importance to fight for the equality for women, but it’s faraway from the last step. After all, the protesters and audiences in the documentary are still fighting against the prejudice/discrimination to women of the “male-dominated society”, diehards still have strong power to struggle (or even still have much more powerful priority than the protesters), which means the prejudice/discrimination still exist, the problem still exist and we still have a long road to run. Addition to women’s rights, there also exists weak groups who suffers from the inequality (thought seemingly they might have special treatment than ordinary people, but somehow the treatment can also be the source of misery if the society hasn’t form the consensus of equality to all people). I have a thought that in times, there can be a method, it allows the weak groups can talk to the mighty groups equally, through the interaction, the disparity in social status can be gradually eliminated, and the opinions differ from the common ideas will no longer considered as the gap between divergent and legitimism but consider as value the conversation brings. Thus, inch by inch, no matter women or other weak groups can speak out their own voice and share the equality with ordinary people. And in further future, what will be eliminated are not the differences between men andwomen, but also the prejudice/discrimination from the whole society. People talk to others equally and freely, people make their own choice depend on their willingness instead of being affected by the society’s prejudice or discrimination. This method can’t be realize in a short time, but it can be a good choice in the process of equality.To end up my review, before the inequality is eliminated relatively, this documentary is worth spreading.。