Strike the balance

Feminism since last few decades vibrantly talks about the rights of women which somehow had been least talked about in past due to various known and unknown reasons. This is a welcome step in the direction of the upliftment of the women, one-half of the world population and without whose contribution the world will come to a standstill. But simultaneously we have to keep it in mind that when we talk about women, we talk in reference to man or vice versa. The better approach is to talk about both simultaneously in a balanced way. Given all this, somehow I feel that in talking about the upliftment of womenfolk, sometimes the rights and liberties of men are trespassed.

We must not forget that men and women are complementary to each other and if we somehow miss to strike a balance, whether in family or in society, they are bound to fall because a delicate fibre binds them together. So, if we talk about the rights and liberties of women, those must not be at the cost of the rights and liberties of women. But the rights, liberties and freedoms must uplift both sections of the society simultaneously, without pushing either of the two to wall.

I don’t deny the fact that in different societies and cultures of the world, we see, women are still somehow treated as second class citizens due to many reasons. But that does not mean that we have to use a single glass or a single scale to look at the things and to address them equally with a similar approach. Rather the practical and pragmatic approach is to address different problems with different approaches and scales. Sometimes a problem needs to be addressed in one way and a second problem needs to be addressed in a different way, that too, not ignoring the ground realities.

Some pseudo feminists make the issues more complex. By looking at the matter in flat, uni dimensional way, the entire society suffers.

In this backdrop, if, on the one hand, there is an urgent need to address the issues and challenges faced by women in different societies or spheres, on the other, the rights, liberties and freedoms of men must be also properly taken care of. We see, different days observed in the name of women emancipation but there are challenges and problems faced by men silently . No one seems to listen the other side of the story. In this situation, when the plight and pleas of men go unheard and unaddressed, the impact is not just on men, but on all.

So it is in the interest of all – men and women – to strike a balance in this entire discourse.