Universality of gender question:

To be a woman is to be like a durga armed with all kinds of weapons. You need to think locally and act globally. On the whole women’s issue is univeral issue. You need to work at micro level and at the macro level. You need to know basics of ideology, politics, sociology, culure, religion, technology and history. anme it you need to know the past present future.  For they were the first to be oppressed and the last to beloberated. The fact that they fall into the first and basic social unit but continues to be oppressed from womb to tomb makes their oppression complex and long term.

Being a girl, married woman, mother and now a grandmother, being a student, teacher, and later whole timer underground rebel, being minister holding several portfolio, being the first lady of the country and now almost in the retiring mode I am feflecting what it is to be a woman and how do you come out of oppressive womb to tomb environment.

I have come across women who are so seeped into feminism that they have become myopic which they seldom realize. They seldome see that there is also hierarchy in women’s class, ethnicity, dalit marginalized community etc.I have come across women who consider themselves product of meritocracy and hate talking about gender issues. They try to shut down or ignore the news of rape and oppression on women. There are women who donot getinto the mess of politics and there are women who is so seeped into politics that they are power blind. They are more judgmental upon women more than men. They are more prudent than required robbing creativity, boldness and initiatives.

They need to know basics of all ideology how they define women’s question. They need to know different religions of the past and the emerging new religion.

The more women know the more she sees herself as part of not only country she is born but part of the world and part of the whole universe system. There are women who are making niche in their profession. I feel proud to see them often competing and sometimes outsmarting men in their profession.

Eventually women who excell are mostly either single unmarried women or divorced woman or married woman without children and mother with supportive husband.  We have to learn to chew without biting our own tongue.

We have to live with mistakes eventually people make mistakes when one goes for action but we need people who quickly learn from mistakes and goes ahead.

We come across power hungry women political leaders who eventually follow gender blind policies. And we also come across apolitical women who out of power hungry women politicians fall into trap of anarchism leading to nowhere and leaving the movement all together.We need all kind of women with different trend and tendencies. We need leftist centrist sometimes we need to live with rightist too. We need revolutionaries, radicles,  anarchists and sometimes we need spiritual people too. We need technocrats, thinkers, managers, women in the street. We need to listen to all kinds of women, women in state, women in executives, CEO, women in households and women in street and squatter settlement. We need reformist women too. We need to work with those who shape the religious mindset too?

We have to be strategists and practical too. We have to know bits of every thing to come back to feminism to enrich not only feminism but also to input gender perspective to all sectors.

By changing yourself you change others and by changing others you change yourself: this should be the mantra one should use all the time.

Her struggle is so private, so intimate and so universal and so diverse and so miniscular. She carries the shadow of her struggle everywhere. She has to be part of her enemy everywhere in order to make her enemy hero everywhere.

Patriarchy is like corona virus disrupting the entire immunity system of gender relationship. And how fast it can spread killing those who have long term diseases.

How the family system made Amitabh the tall hero from inception perhaps till one dies and how the absence or disruption of the same has made Rekha reduced to crumps!