Rethinking Gender Roles: Women Empowerment, Health & Well-Being

Simran Massey (CEO, Rising Gaea)

#genderroles #equality #patriarchy #stereotypes #wellbeing

The COVID-19 induced lockdown has transmuted our lifestyle in a plethora of ways and made us pause everything, leaving loads and piles undone. This interlude is a time to look back at the things that have been taking up our time in the past and consider how important they are. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), women’s empowerment is a public health imperative and quite rightly so.

Undoubtedly, the lockdown affected men and women equally. For instance, it forced them to share household chores at home. Yet, women face egregious discrimination- especially in health and education, access to nutrition and the chance to grow healthy and strong. This makes us reflect on how the very foundation of our abysmal thinking has been corroded, having long lasting consequences of ‘rethinking gender roles’ and abolishing stereotypes in the country.

Prima facie, both mobility and technical knowledge have been the domain of men. Control over women’s bodies and movements has always been crucial to patriarchy’s survival and restricting women from technical knowledge is a corollary to this ideology of control. To be mobile, thus, becomes an important mode of patriarchy and is emancipatory in itself. Hooks (1984) focused on racist and classist oppression as being an integral part of the feminist struggle. Thus, there is a pressing need to redefine feminism as a political commitment and a revolutionary movement by recognising the underlying structures that cause different sorts of oppression.

Our social system, inherently patriarchal, has taken on a form of its own and works to keep some people up but others down. Gender-based inequities likewise impede women’s access to essential health services, causing a range of adverse outcomes. Social norms and culture, which in turn affect preferences, behaviours and incentives to foster specific skills, are key factors in understanding gender differences in accessing healthcare.

In order to bring about a fundamental change in the gender distribution of labour and achieve ‘equality in opportunities’, social norms and stereotypes inherent in our culture must be changed. How can we, then, build a more diverse and inclusive world if we are held back by our own biases? As difficult as this strategy may seem, it is not impracticable to achieve gender equality, especially during COVID-19. It is reasonable to say that it is not the ‘mightiest’ that would survive this pandemic. Conversely, the ones who ‘adapt’ to changes would not only survive but also thrive and evolve.

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Indeed, necessity is the mother of invention! During World War II, we observed how many married women with children joined the labour force for the first time, thus, big crises brought about big change. At this watershed moment, there is an opportunity to forge a new commitment to gender equality, well-being and fairness that will ensure more prosperity for all.

We have all grown up in a world that provides us with a huge set of ready-made prejudices about women of different ethnicities, identities, ages and so on. They can sometimes run so deep that we may be unaware of them, but they inform our actions nonetheless. Maya Angelou, an American poet, succinctly described this as, “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible”.

Thus, we all must take a deep breath and introspect on how to use this ‘annus horribilis’ as an opportunity to break free from our abysmal habits. The Coronavirus pandemic is one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced. We need to work together to solve it by 'rethinking gender roles' in order to achieve greater gender equality!

- Simran Massey

CEO, Rising Gaea

REFERENCES:

Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory from margin to center. Boston, MA: South End Press.