Gender Inequality is Nature’s Plan

Growing up in the “rape capital of India” can do considerable damage to one’s mindset. After all, at the end of the day, who we are? Just the sum of our life’s experiences. Witnessing extreme brutality against a specific gender can also sow seeds of rebellion, and so was the case with me too, few years back. I agree, that even today I am a feminist but my stance about gender equality has undergone a paradigm shift.

All these years of growing up, gave me an opportunity to view life from different perspectives and also the wisdom to respect nature’s designs. Man and woman are not created equal but they are definitely supposed to complement each other.

Every design of nature points towards creating harmony and simplifying the complexities. Had it not been the case, life would have continued to keep its existence as unicellular form, for ever. What was the need for evolution? Why cells combined to form tissues and so on? Well the answer is – harmony and division of labour. If every cell would have to just make ends meet, then how the consciousness would have evolved to the current level of being a human.

Taking a break from biology and coming back to the topic; nature has created this gender difference for some reasons and these reasons became clearer to me, after I became a mom. It’s true that I have witnessed my share of gender inequality at work-place and at home too, and every time I have used that last ounce of energy left in me to fight it out, yet I say gender inequality is nature’s design. May be inequality is the wrong word here, better would be to call it “gender distinction”. It is ok to question society’s attitude but how can we question nature’s plan?

The chemical make-up of a woman is all different from a man, and science has proved that ultimately, every emotion and thought we experience can have a chemical explanation behind it. The manner in which a woman can handle work and home, I don’t expect any man to come even close to that. Ok, we do have exceptions, then how many such men do we have?

The feminist in me wants to take it even a step further, and would love to talk about female superiority. I am a firm believer of the philosophy of “Sacred Feminism”. History is replete with instances of how the role of female in the society was always downplayed and patriarchy was highlighted. Gender inequality was never part of our culture and on the contrary women were revered in most cultures.

What we believe in, that we become. The rotten aspects of gender inequality are rampant in our society because we have been programmed to believe in this lie of weaker sex. Where does this inequality resides? It resides in the mind of the perpetrator and in the beliefs of the victim. Isn’t it? So I believe, it is more psychological in nature than physical. The women first need to change their beliefs about themselves, then at least half the battle will be won.

The day fifty percent of the population of the Earth will cease to believe in this fake idea of being weak, that day gender inequality will be erased. That day perhaps will be the day, when society will start to respect the essence of gender distinction. That day, woman won’t be inferior but will be an equal partner of man. That is the day of my dreams, when we will cease to fight over inequality and will aim for accommodating this distinction by creating safe work-places, equality in pay, equality in everything, except for equality in our basic roles, which we should never try to swap.

This post is written as part of IndiSpire prompt on #Gender Equality. More posts on the prompt may be found here