Violence distresses the lives of millions of women worldwide, in all socio-economic and educational classes. It cuts across cultural and religious obstructions, blocking the right of women to participate fully in society. Violence against women takes a disgusting variety of forms, from domestic abuse and rape to child marriages and female circumcision. In India women create nearly fifty percent of our population. Women are denied human rights from the framework to the grave..
1. Feminist Lens • Oppression – Indian women in this film did not receive the same treatment as men, especially when they become widows. Females as young as eight years are forced to find a husband as their families cannot not support all of their children due to their poor socio-economic conditions. However, when Indian females lose their husbands, they are often looked down upon as it was viewed as a sin for a woman to remain a widow. Widows are required to spend all their lives in an ashram, where living conditions are well below average due to a limited supply of food and other necessities.
Although women make up 49,6% of the world population they only make up 4,4% of the positions of power in the world. In politics, this number is slightly larger but still is a shocking 22%. In addition, two-thirds of all the illiterate people in the world are female, one in three girls have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives and over 150 countries still have a sexist law put into place. Inequality between the sexes often gets associated with feminism. This is because feminists strive to get away with the differences between men and women.
Mastey (2009)1 described widowhood in India as a moment in a woman’s life that is definitive and tragic, where the death of her spouse strips away her own identity. As these women are not very well educated due to low literacy rate in India, they are not left with many options in terms of occupation. Thousands of widows are disowned by their relatives and thrown out of their homes in the context of land and inheritance disputes. Their options, given a lack of education and training, are mostly limited to becoming exploited, unregulated, domestic labourers (often as house slaves within the husband 's family), or turning to begging or prostitution (Bill I, 2006)2. Indian widows are often regarded as “evil eyes,” the purveyors of ill fortune and unwanted burdens on poor families (UN Division for the Advancement of Women, 2000)3.
Eve-teasing is also responsible for the dropping-out of girls from school. Early marriage and dowry system are widely practiced among Bihari community. Lack of educational facilities and security are the impediments for the proper mental development of Bihari children, girls, teenagers and women. Many women firmly believe that the repatriation to Pakistan is totally impractical and they demand the proper rights as the citizens of Bangladesh. A large section of women are engaged in different types of handicraft, embroidery and boutique for maintaining the living cost of their family (RMMRU, 2003).
Based on my experiences, I have proved that I am versatile. It’s still kind of hard. Moving, especially the road trips I have been on, have made me fall in love with the environment and life. I’ve been exposed to many types of people and cultures. These experiences have made me even more religious too.
Birthmothers in The Giver are only allowed to have three births, then they are reassigned to be labor workers for the rest of their lives. The women have their kids then give them up to be nurtured, named, and given to a family unit, so the Birthmother will have no way of knowing which children are hers. In the same way, there are people in modern society that give up their children for adoption if they feel they can not take care of them or don’t want to. “Each year in the United States, about 51,000 American children are placed for adoption. In addition, about 6,500 foreign children are adopted by Americans, for a total of a little under 58,000 children adopted per year”(pregnantpause).
The group consisted of women who brought fifty dollars to the group every month and donated it all to one family who needed it the most. This confused Kennedy because he did not understand why his family had to give almost all of their money to another family. Kennedy did not grow up in a wealthy family. Kennedy’s family always struggled to make ends meet, until his mother started the group. When it was Kennedy’s family’s turn to receive the donations from the women’s group, he realized how it actually helped his family start to come out of poverty.
The statistics presented by This Day newspaper 2011 are daunting showing that about 50% of women have been battered by their husbands14. Most women endure, believing they have nowhere to go and believing, that the law will not protect them. Project alert, a non-governmental women 's rights organization16 in a survey on violence against women conducted interviews with women working in the markets and other places of work and girls and young women in secondary schools and universities,
Distant location of secondary schools from home prevent many parents to allow continuation of their studies. Girls’ enrolment drops off sharply with each 500-metre increase in distance from the closest school admitting girls and this ‘distance penalty’ accounts for 60% of the gender gap in enrolments. In Pakistan, bearing sons increases the status of a family, but daughters are considered