Hi everyone. I belong to a primarily patriarchal society of Pakistan. My family is thankfully an educated one and so am I. The subjugation of women and male supremacy is so much engraved in our society that our upbringing is done in a way that we are not able to notice it until we are educated about it.
This is not just about Pakistan or about the place that I belong to, it is global in nature. Anyways, my realization of gender inequalities came as a Food for thought from a very close friend. He is a well read person who knows a great deal about this sort of stuff.
It was in the early years of my teenage. I thought that men are the important fragments of the society and they are allowed to do anything and women are confined within the bounds of their homes. On a fine Sunday morning in 2013, My friend Kashif and I met and had this fruitful conversation that I still remember. The food for thought came in the form of a story that he told me. It completely changed the way I used to think.
He told me that there was a landlord in a village who had a son and a daughter. One day, he found his son with a girl. He became proud of his son and got him married to that girl within next few weeks. When he saw his daughter with a boy, he became infuriated. He thought that his daughter is ruining is his respect in the society even though she was not in a physical relationship like her brother was. The father soon stopped his daughter from studying and caged her in her room and was even beating her because she befriended a male.
This story was a ground breaking one. A very similar behavior expressed by two siblings and they both very contrasting consequences. I was amazed at this realization and this became a food for thought for me that still shakes my belief and thought process.
I firmly believe that women are equal human beings who have gone through centuries of patriarchal subjugation and that they should be free to exercise their free will. Since then, I have tried to be the best version of myself when it comes to treating women. I try not to be a stumbling block or a societal hurdle for the women around me. Moreover, I also have pursued Gender Studies as one of the courses in my exam to learn more about women and what they go through. I try to spread awareness among men and women about the societal barriers.
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Thank you for your time and support. It means a lot to me.
Ps: The picture is mine taken with my Google pixel.