EMPOWERMENT is the granting of power from one to another.

Even in 2021, women – close to half of this world’s population – are still made to beg to be ‘empowered’, still fighting for a say – a say in their choices, their education, their jobs, their pay, their sexuality, their reproductive system, their lives!

A husband asks his wife to give up the child in her womb, because she is just a girl – like her. A father cuts off his teenage daughter’s head because the family honour is more valuable than her life. A rapist is asked to marry the women he raped! She will be better off living with the man who abused and scarred her than alone. These are incidents from this week.

In 2020, the pandemic showed us the world was united in one thing, beyond geographies, politics and borders – the abuse of its women.

When a woman has to ask for power, has to beg & fight, is it truly empowering?
If you hire a young girl for ‘diversity’,
if you can jail a woman for driving,
If a wife has no choices in the family’s finances,
if woman cannot choose to keep or give up a pregnancy,
If she has to choose between her job and childcare,
if patriarchy can separate her, the primary caregiver, from her child
if she, a CEO, still has to pause and check what must be cooked for dinner,
If a woman has no rights on her parents property,
If she has to be ok with a lower pay than a male counterpart,

If the answer to NO, is acid, rape and murder
And If a rape victim is better dead than alive,

Has our reality, truly changed, or are we just claiming progress based on survivorship bias?
And most important, do we really intend for there to be any empowerment?