Feminism isn’t about making women strong, it is about changing the world’s perception of strength: Raising awareness at Jagran Lakecity University

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 21^st 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.