Women play variety of significant roles in our society from their birth till the end of life. Even after playing her all the roles and the entire job timely in efficient manner in the modern society, she is weak because men are still strongest gender of the society. However, protest moments on global scale have started recently against gender discrimination, but her life is still more complicated than a man. She has to take care of herself and family members as daughter, granddaughter, sister, daughter-in-law, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, etc. By following such a big responsibility in the family, they are fully able to come out and do job for bright future of own, family and society. Earlier women were facing problems like child marriage, sati pratha, parda pratha, restriction to widow remarriage, widows exploitation, devadasi system, etc. However, almost all the old traditional problems have been disappeared gradually from the society but given rise to other new issues. Few topics today consume the attention of researchers in social sciences, governments, planning groups, social workers and reformers as the problems of women do. Approaches to the study of women’s problems range from the study of gerontology to psychiatry and criminology. But one important problem relating to women which has been greatly ignored is the problem of violence against women.
Violence against Women: Violence against women is perhaps as old as mankind. At present it is found not only in under developed countries or developing countries but even in developed countries of the world. In Indian society woman is viewed primarily as her husband’s property. The husband has the same proprietary right over her as he has over other assets in the house. In such a situation it is considered that an effective way of penalizing the man is to snatch away his property i.e., his wife. Unfortunately in India we have a unique situation of co-existence of all forms of violence, especially of elimination of women e.g. selective female feticide, female infanticide, bride burning and sati. The women, right from the moment of stepping into the husband’s home tries to forget her own identity and adjust everything according to the needs of the new place and the people living in it. But the violence against women (like, dowry related harassment, death, marital rape, wife-battering, sexual abuse, deprivation of healthy food, female genital mutilation, etc) from the womb to the tomb continues.
Violence against women in India is a very big and serious social issue which has taken its root deeply to the societal norms and economic dependence. This issue of violence against women comes forth time to time in the form of brutal gang-rape, sexual harassment at work place, acid attack, etc. A big incident of violence against an 8-year old girl, Asifa Bano, was happened in Rasana village near Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, India on 10th of January in 2018. It was an abduction, brutal gang rape and murder of an innocent little girl. A huge crowd of angry people come out to the streets by having a call for justice.
Even after happening such type of cases regularly in the society, it is not going to change the societal norms against women. It is going very complex and deeply rooted in the Indian society even after increasing education level of the people. Violence against women happens because of inefficient legal justice system, weak rules of law and male dominated social and political structures. According to the research it is found that violence against women begins at home in the early age especially in the rural areas by the family members, relatives, neighbors, and friends. From the origin of social life in the country various centuries came and gone, time has changed people’s mind and environment a lot, however violence against women is not seems to change a little bit. Time is the real eyewitness of all the sufferings (like sex discrimination, exploitation, oppression, aggression, degradation, humiliation, etc) bear by the helpless women. In the Vedas, women are glorified as mother means one who can create and nourish a life. On the other hand, they have found themselves suppressed and subjugated by the men in the patriarchal society. Violence against women can be domestic as well as public, physical, emotional or mental. Women have fear of violence in their mind which causes the lack of participation in various areas of life.
Gender Discrimination: Women in the Indian society have been victims of humiliation, torture and exploitation for as long as we have written records of social organization and family life. Women are considered as weaker section of the society than men and given less importance. Female children are becoming real victims of the discrimination. There are also discrimination of power and work between men and women because of the patriarchal family system in India. Discrimination in some cases leads to discomfort and even death. So, gender discrimination is dangerous and discrimination within a gender is more dangerous and a criminal offence. Gender discrimination affects women in the areas like nutrition, education, healthcare, decline of female population, job, public life, social rights etc.
Women Empowerment: Playing multiple roles in families, women have already proven their worth, but still their condition on social and economical fronts has not been up to the mark and in many parts of the world they are forced to live a miserable life. In such a scenario, it calls for immediate attention to empower them and create conducive environment for their social and economic upliftment. Women empowerment is a must for the betterment of any country’s future as they play dual responsibilities of managing their families while simultaneously juggling to earn to contribute in fulfilling the material needs of their families. No one can ever ignore the importance of the role of a mother, sister, or a daughter in their families. At the same time, women have also established themselves as equal contributors in managing the financial requirements of their homes. On various international platforms, women have successfully proved that if given a chance they can perform not less than their male counterparts and the 2016 RIO Olympics bears a testimony to this fact. No one can ever forget the names of RIO stars – Sakshi Malik, PV Sindhu and Dipa Karmakar – who became successful in breaking the barriers of gender to raise India’s national flag high in front of the whole world. There is no denial to the fact that in a male dominated country like India, it would have been really hard for them to emerge out of the various prevalent taboos to achieve such positions of eminence. Empowerment of women is a necessary basic condition for socio-economic development of our society. Strategies need to be designed to enhance the capacity of women and empower them to meet deprivation.
In our society, the condition of women is far from satisfactory. They have not been empowered enough to get equal opportunities in realizing their fullest potential. In such condition, we can say that our country cannot become a developed nation unless we empower women in the true sense of the term. It is very necessary to pay proper attention to their development by providing them equal opportunities in all areas of human activity. Also, the violence against Indian women is a blot on the nation and the society as well. As long as the Indian women are subjected to violence, the international image of India is also going to suffer. Also, incidents of domestic violence, sexual assaults and other similar crimes on women will continuously damage Indian society and obstructs national progress. Therefore, it is imperative to take stringent counter measures to diminish any kind of violence against Indian women.

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