Women's Empowerment/ Single Women in 21st Century India – Has Anything Changed?

Although one's experience and discussions with peers and friends, makes one veer towards a conclusion that things have changed for women in the world, in reality, it isn't quite so. In a world which comprises of 49.6 % of women according to a World Bank data, in the century that it has taken for things to change for this gender, this change has not been profound.

Sample this. Country India. First Woman Prime Minister of India – 1966. Country America – 2016. Probable first woman President of America. And the headline was screaming, “Glass ceilings shattered” when she was just being nominated as the presidential candidate by the Democrats!

Sample this. After the headlines of 2014 screamed that the % of women CEOs of the top Fortune 500 companies had reached a historic high of 4.8%, - yes 4.8 %,!, sadly, the 2016 list saw this drop to 4.2%.
 

Sample this. I was told by a male American colleague that a single unmarried woman staying with parents beyond the age of 18 or maximum 20, would be the object of ridicule (Is she not mature fully…? Why isn’t she moving out…?etc, etc ...and later, an English colleague would say that things were not much different in England though it was changing as she had heard of local colleagues whose relatives had 'chosen' to continue living with their parents.) This was being said to me, who was over forty, still staying with her aged parents because in India, it is perfectly normal to be doing so. In fact, it would perhaps be regarded as anything but sacrilege for a single or married woman or man, to leave their parents alone - to be left to take care of themselves during their old age. Things re ofcourse changing with an ever changing, ever evolving world and the paces differ - with different groups and sub groups evolving withing the same societies at different levels and different paces.

At this point, I would love everyone who hasn't yet heard  of Chimamanda Ngozi’s “The Danger of a Single Story“, to please do get acquainted with it.

But back to women and their plight – it doesn’t matter which part of the globe they belong to,  regardless of the advancements made, every status of theirs gets questioned. Even in the 21st century.
Depends on which part of the globe you are in. So, you could be questioned or talked about from being "single" to being "divorced" to being "issue-less" to being "married" to being "not married"...and no all of these are work-place discussions.

Or as I was recently enlightened about the US culture of "ambition" in women going against them. Huh. And you thought of US as being progressive?
So women do get weighed heavily not just on the social parameter which includes several social paraphernalia but also cultural biases. 

So yes woman's empowerment is yet a far cry from what it should be in 21st century. In fact, as an Indian, sometimes I think perhaps, women in India fare better.  Due largely to the social set up. A woman staying with parents earns the respect of the society at large for reasons that need not be elaborated. And the liberated, empowered woman of today's India does that of her own free accord. And this comes to mind due to the comments I have heard and that I have shared above. Also, I don't think ambition in workplace among women in India would be looked down upon or in any way denigrated.

Unfortunately for India, in the wake of the infamous and sad gangrape of a young girl in Delhi, who was travelling in a bus and with her boyfriend, there were many articles that were written about the fate of women, particularly single women in India. BBC, whose reports are like the gospels of truth for many, too carried several reports on single women and their plights in India.

Talking about empowerment of women in India, while it has been painfully slow, and will be for years to come, yes, there are empowered women and perhaps it is this empowerment that has seen the rise of single women in India. An indiatimes.com article of 2015 suggested that some 21% of the women’s population above the age of 20 is single. This in itself might not make sense as this obviously includes those who would get married. But what would make eye balls rise is the whopping 40% increase in this population in the last one decade.

While the increasing cases of young brides refusing their grooms on grounds of illiteracy, improper household arrangements in their in-laws’ houses etc being reported bring to light the seemingly empowered women – and here I use the term “seemingly empowered women” because this again is a complex social issue – the whole scenario of “arranged marriages” where a bride or a groom being rejected on grounds of “illiteracy” would probably need a deeper understanding of what went wrong in the education system, where the constitution of India guarantees free education for every child – but then, that would go beyond the realm of this article.

While I am not a proponent of a person rejecting another on the basis of socio-economic factors, which to my eyes are mere ephemerals, the fact that Indian women are feeling liberated and empowered enough to say no to a situation, where they are marred for life by being tied to a man who might turn out to be scum (it could be vice-versa too but fortunately man today has the liberty to say no).

One could write reams and reams on empowerment, the real empowerment at least in what I see around me, comes through education, through parental love, the upbringing that they’ve had and through the society that they’ve been lucky to be part of, enabling them to carry on their jobs without being reactive to the various jibes, talks, discussions and that they could be subjected to.

 
So yes, things will change. There are so many who remark about single women “Oh she can afford do that, she has no family.” or “Oh, one should have been like her - nothing to worry about, no work to do”. Really? So, had anyone stopped you from pursuing this path? The single woman too is often heard saying, “I have my boyfriend waiting for me outside” when actually she is going to get into her car and zoom off to meet her girlfriends, not because she is a lesbo but because she hasn’t found the right guy yet. She doesn't want to be the topic of discussion among her peers. That she is “still” single. And so for fear of being the topic of discussions, has learnt the art of fibbing. Not because she minds being single but she minds being discussed.

Just like Indira Nooyi, Chanda Kochar, and Chtra Ramakrishna made it to the top almost at the same time as the rest of the women from across the globe, similarly the single women in India would gain freedom from biases in almost the same time as those from across the globe. In time.