Imagine if we were living in a world where a man was afraid of a woman taking his job. If we were living in a world where a woman walks into meetings confidently, applies for jobs she isn’t fully qualified for, and is not talked over. Where she needs no permission to do paid work and splits household work with the men in the house equally. Imagine if a woman has the courage to take charge of her body, reveal the fire in her eyes, and take the world by her force. Sounds utopian, but also simple and completely achievable. This is the world we would rather live in, but why does this reality seem so close and yet so far away?
Starting with the basics, women are just starting from a much lower base level. If two people are running a 100m race and one is starting 10m behind the starting line and has more hurdles placed on the way, the odds are stacked against them. Unfortunately, that is the plight of girls in India today for a large part, and particularly so for the “invisible girls”. Those left out, those with little opportunity and without any of the basic amenities to live by — a stable shelter, toilet, clean water, sanitary pads, and decent schooling. So, how do we get from this -10m point on the track to the finish line at 100m where we can be closer to our utopian reality?
Let’s consider the following questions first: Who is this future for? What are the things that are most essential to their well-being? What are their personal goals and ambitions? Once we have a clear idea of what our final goal is, the next step of action is understanding what needs to be done and who these efforts need to be led by to translate this vision into reality. We’ve learnt a lot of lessons during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where women at -10m have been pushed even further behind to -15m with increased violence against them at home, worsening mental health and physical wellbeing, increased burden of child care, home-schooling and loss of livelihood for themselves and others in their family.
At Myna Mahila Foundation, adolescent girls are at the focus of our work and it is their interests, goals, and challenges that frame both our vision and plan for the future.
Starting with sexual and reproductive health as a foray into other issues! This can look like:
All these efforts can start pushing the needle and handholding women from -15m to 0m, when they are more ready to take on their peers and compete at par. When women and men stand at the same baseline, at the same 0m, men are likely to be equally afraid of losing to women, and women have more courage to remove the additional hurdles on their track permanently, running to the finish line at least as quickly as others can.