By: Sr Justine Gita Senapati
Woman is the co-creator that reflects the feminine face of the God. She is the only privileged one to carry another life within with total sacrifice and selfless love!
Womanhood is God’s greatest gift to the humanity to experience His feminine nature, love and care. Each one of us in this world shares completely the life of a woman. From its conception, the fetus shares the flesh and blood, the oxygen and the food to shape another human being. The little babe continues to depend entirely for its physical, emotional, moral, social and psychological aspects to grow up to a fully human person.
I come from a religion, believing that even God the creator of the universe chose a woman and not a man to be born and experience the human love. I go into ecstasy when I meditate of this truth that God became man by being born of a woman. What a great honor God has given to the woman! Is there anything God could have done to show that who woman is or what is her role in the society than this?
On March 8, 2017, we are going to celebrate the International Women’s Day. “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030” is the theme of this year. The campaign call focuses: Be Bold for Change for Better working world-a more inclusive and a gender equal world.
But our society is male dominated. The patriarchal system is one of darkest sides of human civilization. The system keeps the women often subjugated to men as if to fulfill the needs of men. The illiteracy, inequality, social and cultural taboos and violence against women are prevalent even at this digital age of today.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in “World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics” notifies that 58 million children of primary school age are out of school worldwide. More than half of them are girls and nearly three quarters live in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
According to the UNESCO Education literacy statistics, 17 percent of the world’s adult population is still not literate and an estimated 122 million youth globally are illiterate of which young women represent 60.7 percent. This scale of youth is an enormous challenge; making gender equality even harder to achieve.
Illiteracy gives way to gender related violence. Societal and cultural discriminatory practices lead to child marriage, which can be called crime against minors. This practice steals of their childhood and to enjoy the womanhood. As per the UNICEF data released in 2014, more than 700 million women alive today were married as children. More than one in three or some 250 million were married before the age of 15.
Gender inequalities perpetuate extreme poverty and economic disparities. In many countries, women continue to be economically dependent on their spouses and suffer from unequal division of paid and unpaid work.
According to UN’s “World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics”, only 50 percent of women of working age are in the labor force, compared to 77 percent of men. Inequality between women and men tends to be severe and highly visible in power and decision-making arenas. Currently, only one in five members of lower or single houses of parliament worldwide is a woman.
In developing countries, statutory and customary laws continue to restrict women’s access to land and other assets. In nearly a third of developing countries, laws do not guarantee the same inheritance rights for women and men. The statistics further states that moreover, about one in three married women from developing regions has no control over household spending on major purchases and about one in 10 married women is not consulted on how their own cash earnings are spent.
Changing our mindset by changing our narrative is very imperative. Women are not only the victims of violence but they are the effective agents for sustaining peace who create the parity in economic, political, cultural and social framework in the society. Woman is the counterpart of man having the equal responsibility in society as men do. Therefore, world can never enjoy the real freedom unless equality is seen in action.
(Sr. Justine Gitanjali Senapati is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph (Annecy). Since 2014, she has served at the United Nations as the representative for the Congregations of St. Joseph, which includes 30 global independent congregations.)