Farook Ahmed :
About half of our populations are women and the other half are men. Though the numerical ratio is 50:50 but the scale of power enjoyed by women in our society in comparison to men is almost nix. Religion, social customs, traditions and men’s misogynistic attitude have divested our women of even the minimal power. We know of no country in the world where women enjoy power on equal footing with men.
This is more acute in the Muslim countries where women are culturally and religiously bound to remain subservient to men. Disobedience to man by woman is considered a grave sin. Subordination of women to men is claimed as prerogative of men folk. We need to realize the fact that Islam has vouchsafed woman status and dignity but not authority and power. Man shall domineer over woman-is the common peremptory injunctions of all major religions. It is an undeniable fact that religions stand as an impediment to empowering women.
Power pollutes, perhaps, for this reason, all divine laws kept women out of the circle of power. A Hindu woman lives on the mercy of her father or husband. She has no legal rights upon the properties of her father or husband. Hindu religion has deprived a Hindu woman of inheriting any properties from her father or husband. In this respect a Muslim woman is in a better position than a Hindu woman.
A Muslim woman can claim share of properties both from her father and husband provided she obey her father and husband with complete obeisance. Hindu religion enjoins upon a Hindu wife to worship her husband as a divine entity. Both father’s and husband’s commands to a Hindu and a Muslim wife is sacrosanct.
They cannot exercise any authority over their father and husband. No Muslim, Hindu or Christian women can claim prophet hood, holiness or divinity which is the sole province of men. Many of us say that education and economic emancipation is the only prerequisite for empowering women. In the western countries almost all women are highly educated and economically independent, yet real power remains in the hands of men.
America vociferously clamors for empowerment of women, but has not yet elected a woman as president of the country since its independence about two centuries ago. NGOs’ like CARE, OXFAM and Grameen bank adopted comprehensive plan to empower our village women by providing financial support in the form of employment, training, education and seed-money for small-scale business, but the result was highly disastrous. When women came out of their homes to work outside, our conservative society raised hue and cry and vehemently opposed to let their women to work for the NGOs’. Thousands of women were either divorced or stigmatized as socially outcasts. Many NGOs were blamed for derailing our womenfolk.
Because of fierce local opposition, a good number of NGOs had to shelve their programs in thousands of villages across the country. Grameen bank has wreaked havoc in many rural families since its inception in the name of empowering women. We need to understand the reality that empowerment of women does not imply equality of man and woman.
When we try to impose the idea that man and woman are equal, this conception is the main obstacle in the real empowerment of our women. Education and financial independence will never put a woman on par with a man in a Muslim-majority country like Bangladesh. Empowerment of women shall continue to remain an enigma unless our men folk condescend to change their deeply-rooted outlook of self-righteousness and misogynistic feelings against the women folk.
It may sound ridiculous if we say that the real empowerment of women lies in the disempowerment of men. We must provide cheap or free education to our village girls and women. Education will surely make them conscious, intelligent and capable of taking judicious decisions. It is not necessary that all women should be earners of money for being empowered.
In our country women’s financial self-sufficiency creates more familial problems than benefits. In the western countries the divorce rate is in the region of 85% because of women’s high rate of financial independence. In Bangladesh divorce rate is very minimal owing to monetary dependence of our women on their husbands.
We must bear it in mind that wives’ financial reliance on husbands is the sine qua non for lasting and sustainable conjugal relationship of husband and wife. Let us not forget that when a marriage is dissolved on any ground, the worst victims and sufferers are the innocent children. So our women should be empowered up to a tolerable limit but not beyond. Our society presumes that an empowered woman will always try to overpower her husband and other male members of the households.
Then this will certainly lead to break-up of marriage. Major religions of the world have not put any financial burden or responsibility on the shoulders of women to save them from being victims. Our men want to empower our women through higher education but not solely by making her earner of money. Because they apprehend that earning women usually tend to be overweening and domineering. A sense of egotism work within themselves which make them supercilious resulting in the fatal dissension in the family.
For this reasons, most men are naturally reluctant to see their wives as bread-winner of their family. When a woman obtains a job or desires to work outside, she faces serious opposition first from her husband and then from her other male relatives. Even Many working women had to quit their jobs after marriage.
Working women are often either suspected or charged with sexual infidelity by their husbands. We should not be oblivious of this fact that our conservative society does not want to see our women to be empowered. Hence real empowerment of our women still remains elusive.
(The writer is ex-DIG of Police).
