A Woman’s Home

I ask the readers, “Where is a woman’s home? Is it the home of her parents, or is it the home to which she is married off? Are these the only two options available for a woman?

The world is progressing. Our Nation is progressing. Yet on some mornings, we still wake up in the morning and hear news about deaths because of domestic violence and dowry issues. In some cases, she kills herself because she can’t stand the torture anymore, while in some other cases, she is killed because someone didn’t get what they wanted, so they don’t want to take care of her anymore.

“A divorced daughter is better than a dead daughter” is a famous quote now, and society is slowly accepting this fact. However, another famous statement that was widely used in the media following the recent demise of many women due to domestic violence and dowry issues was “let her keep her room, even after she is married off”. While the statement is rather positive and asks the parents of women to offer her support and make her feel protected and safe when they are in trouble, I see a hidden problem in it.

“Let her have her room back.” So someone should let her. She should be allowed to. Allowed by whom?

We marry her off expecting the husband to take care of her, and if he is not doing so, we, the parents, have to let her back in and take care of her. So my question is, why are we so focused on having someone to take care of her? Why are we not focusing on equipping her to take care of herself?

We equip our boys to take care of things on their own, to run a family. We as a society feed the “need to be able to take care of things on their own” into our boy’s minds from a very young age to stand on their own two feet when they grow up. Men are not growing up expecting that a woman will come into their lives and start providing for them and will be taking care of them till their life ends. So why aren’t we bringing up our girls like that? Directly or indirectly, aren’t we telling our girls to be always dependent?

We should focus on raising our girls so that they will know within them that they have to take care of themselves and can’t stay under their parents’ protective wings forever. That from a point in life, they have to start making their own decisions. They should be brave enough to rejoice in making the right decisions and take full responsibility for the wrong ones.

There are a lot of people out there who think that educating a girl is everything. Recent events show that while education is something, it clearly isn’t everything. There are many professionals amongst the victims of domestic violence.

It is time that we think about the gap. Where are things going wrong? In my opinion, unless a girl becomes capable of thinking on her own and strong enough to express her thoughts, make her own decisions, execute them and deal with the consequences, be it good or bad, she is never safe. Her happiness and well-being will remain at the mercy of someone else.