Having bagged endless accolades in the
fields of education, architecture, agriculture, engineering and what not, the
one thing that still remains under developed is ‘Woman.’ The term ‘Woman’ not
only represents the female gender, but the million voices muted under the
weight of inequality. It represents numerous little girls, the one who never
reached the gates of a school, the one who was married at a minor age and then
forced to bear children, the one who was mocked at for being too educated to
find an eligible groom, the one who chose to let go of the taboos of the
society to keep her head high, the term WOMAN isn’t just a word, it is an
emotion with the depth of an ocean.
To honor the contribution of women to
the society, the United Nations SDG 5 works towards achieving gender equality
and empower all women and girls by the year 2030. Though 47% of world leaders
speak in favor of female reservation in corporate sectors, the fraction of
women actually working on top and mid management levels is less than one third.
The condition is far worse in politics where only 23.4% of national
parliamentarians are women, when 39% countries in the world have female quota
for parliament. Going down to the grass root level, for every dollar earned by
a man working as labor, a woman makes just 77 cents while handling three times
more responsibilities than men, including cooking, cleaning and taking care of
the children.
To address the issue at a student level,
the Jagran Lakecity University in collaboration with AIESEC Bhopal organized a
quiz for the hostelers of JLU Bhopal on ‘Women Empowerment’ on 21st
September 2017. The students were
selected in teams of two with a total of six teams. All the rounds were
elimination with one simple rule ‘the answer to every question should be a
woman or a thing done by a woman.’ The quiz was followed by a group discussion
round where a platform was provided to the students for portraying their
thoughts on the present condition of women in the society. Surprisingly, the
discussion saw great male participation where the students spoke about their
outlook of women empowerment while the women threw light on their daily
encounters in a patriarchal society. The whole event was an initiative by the
Social Volunteering Community of Jagran Lakecity University that was aimed at
engaging the students in a fun activity while emphasizing the dire need of
women empowerment.
