Ashutosh Kumar

Wishing you happy International Women's Day. On this day, please find attached my published article "Women Empowerment: Miles to go before sleep" in Bhavan's Journal for your kind reading..


“Some of the greatest minds have been left out of history because they were women.” … Melinda Gates

The journey of human civilization to achieve goal of women empowerment has not yet achieved. The discrimination and unjust treatment to women leads to vocal voices. Fight for the empowerment of women may be difficult to trace in history, but it can be stated with certitude that there were several voices raising battles to empower them.

Women empowerment through Gender equality as an ideal has always eluded the constitutional provisions for equality before the law or equal protection of law. This is because equality is always supposed to be between equals and since the judges did not concede that men and women were equal, gender inequality did not seem to them to be legally forbidden inequality. In Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 us 130,141 (1973), Justice Bradley of the United States Supreme Court said: “The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female s*x evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life…The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” As late as in 1961, the United States Supreme Court upheld a law placing women on the jury list only if they made a special request because, as Justice Harlan put it,” a woman is still regarded as the centre of home and family life.” (Hoyt V Florida 368 US 57, 62 (1961); 7 L Ed 2d 118, 122 (1961)

The hope still lies as Justice Benjamin Cardozo once stated “The process of Justice is never finished, but reproduces itself, generation after generation, in ever-changing forms, and today, as in the past, it calls for the bravest and the best…” It has to be borne in mind that in the absence of empowerment of women, human rights remain in an inaccessible realm. The days of treating women as fragile, feeble, dependant and subordinate to men should be a matter of history. We all should remember the words of Lord Denning: “If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still while the rest of the world goes on, and that will be bad for both.”

Despite we still have miles to go to ensure real empowerment of women, in the years to come, the dream of the poet Subramaniya Bharatiar for the most beautiful gift of God will become reality:

She walks with raised head,
With her eyes looking straight,
She has her principles,
Unafraid of anybody!
She has a lofty and knowledge based pride,
Such cultured women,
Don’t falter from the chosen path,
She drives ignorance away.
She welcomes the bliss of life,
With learned mind,
This is the Dharma
Of emerging woman.

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Women Empowerment: Miles to go before sleep | Ashutosh Kumar Wishing you happy International Women's Day. On this day, please find attached my published article "Women Empowerment: Miles to go before sleep" in Bhavan's Journal for your kind reading.. “Some of the greatest minds have been left out of history because they were women.” … Melinda Gates The ...