Gender Equality?
The world celebrated women’s day on March 8th, and like every year, government and corporate too had announced/started their campaigns week in advance for the same. This year, our Prime Minister went a step ahead and has announced that:
“This Women's Day, I will give away my social media accounts to women whose life & work inspire us. This will help them ignite motivation in millions. Are you such a woman or do you know such inspiring women? Share such stories using #SheInspiresUs”
Nothing wrong or offensive in Prime Minister’s statement! The only concern that I have is the inherent and ever-growing gynocentrism in government policies and initiatives. And this gynocentrism is growing even when the government’s reports and statistics are evidence of the fact that it has reached the level of ‘discrimination’ against men.
Recently, Minister of Railways, Sh. Piyush Goyal tweeted a video saying:
“Towards Empowering Women: Commemorating the upcoming International Women’s Day, Rajya Rani Express train between Bengaluru & Mysuru was run by an all women crew today.
Watch Railways motorwoman expertly navigate the train through the interiors of our nation.”
Why only today? Was the empowerment desired only for one day?
This is not the first time when ‘an all-women crew’ is introduced in railways. Here are a few instances.
Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Will Soon Have All-Women Ticket Checking Crew
Then also came a news Shatabdi trains not to have women TTEs anymore due to them complaining about long working hours.
All-women crew to run Jaipur’s Gandhinagar railway station
Govindpuri railway station in Kanpur to have all-women staff from today, Govindpuri railway station had all-women staff except sweepers to clean the station toilets. Why? Equality wasn’t required in cleanliness?
All-women crew pilots passenger train from Ranchi to Tori
From pilots to TTEs, it was women’s day at railways
Ever since Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi adventure failure, almost all the adventures engaging women, highlighting equality have been restricted to a single day only. Also, a point to ponder here is that how many other initiatives were actually ‘all women’ and 'ongoing' too.
Recently, when the Chandrayaan was launched, the female scientists of ISRO were given credit and congratulated. Had #Chandrayaan2 been a 100% success, media would've been flooded with the news of daughters' contribution. But since it lost contact in the final moments, neither we got any comments on those celebrated daughters, nor they appeared as sad, whereas one son was crying and another was comforting him.
In no way, am trying to demean the efforts of our lady scientists, but just wondering why is it so that success has many women, failure focuses only on Men!
Also, we need to understand that when we blindly celebrate people just because of their gender, largely, undeserving and unscrupulous ones get promoted and encouraged too. This adds to the existing many instances that highlight discrimination against men in the name of 'Equality'!
What purpose does unduly supporting, enacting and enforcing the theory of Radical Feminism serve when it only preaches women to be ashamed of agreeing with their biology and their psychological/physiological makeup and pursue mightily things that go against their very nature?
In today’s scenario, when men are at the receiving end of most of the arenas of gender politics, this clear discrimination by the state against men sometimes goes beyond understanding.
I feel that this unnecessary insistence on women's empowerment and equality itself has a built-in gender bias, and it’s frightening too that this gender-bias every time comes from the government side only.
If the government is so carried away with the photo ops of hollow women empowerment and equality, why don't it encourage creating an equitable, entirely merit-driven and gender-neutral workspace without any bias or favor, where women are treated same as men, and let their responsibilities & opportunities not depend on whether they are born male or female.
For the government, it is important to differentiate between 'Feminism' and the 'Principles of Equality', offering equal opportunity to men and women alike. Former is a leftist movement, whereas the latter is an idea that Save Indian Family Movement, the Men's Rights Movement of India supports.
Let everyone be held accountable for their role in the workplace.
Praising and honoring the pioneers, the mentors, the legends, is appreciable, but what's the point in encouraging the leftists, the rebels, the hustlers, the unscrupulous ones, just in order to please a specific gender?
For 'Equality' photo ops, it's very easy to treat everyone as an equal. But how appreciable is dismantling and assembling, existing systems, practices, and policies just to please a specific gender, while discriminating against the other?