Our social matrix is gender biased

She was beyond her marriageable age now. Because of the early death of her mother, she could not vent out to her father the anguish wrought by people’s probing eyes and jibes which became more pungent as she neared the threshold of a confirmed spinster. Her father counted her responsible for all her agony as she was not beautiful as per media-infected standards of beauty. Even her younger brothers started deriding her for being a hurdle in their marriages.

Anyhow, she got married to a person far below her education. Her in-laws were notorious for inhumane treatment of women, but facing Hobson’s choice, she accepted it because she had already been tormented much by family and society equally.

After a year, she was expecting. The husband selected a private hospital claiming to provide the patients with state-of-the-art facilities. She herself bore all its expenses in the name of her parents as it is a synthetic tradition in our society. Beaming with the bliss of becoming a mother, she reached the hospital on the tentative date of the delivery prescribed by her gynaecologist.

She spent a whole day and a night at the hospital but the doctor “advised” her to wait further for the onset of labour pains, which didn’t come at all. Being agitated, she inquired the doctor if anything was serious. The doctor’s reply was disappointing for her: “As you are overage, there are some complications. We are forced to opt for a C-section.”

Her distress knew no bounds as the compound word (overage) was uttered by the doctor in the presence of her in-laws who ambushed at the word and saved it as a fodder to compound their future jeering at her. It was her secret she kept for long, but at last was revealed by none other than those who were trusted to keep it.

The patriarchal behaviour of her family is understandable in our societal matrix, though not acceptable, but the doctor’s (and that too of a gynaecologist’s) unprofessional tactics of delaying the delivery towards C-section, and breaching of medical ethics by exposing her privacy to her in-laws, don’t behove to a doctor by any yardstick.

Girls’ education in our society has never been accorded its due share of attention and priority. Primitive societal mores still haunt us at our subconscious level that a girl’s education is nothing but a white elephant for parents. People pay tremendous lip service to a girl’s education, but in actuality half-hearted moral support or depleted provision of facilities is meted out to her. The famous drama serial Zindgi Gulzar Hey realistically depicts the discrimination extended to the education of girls in our society.

Parents send their son to average-to-higher fee private schools while the daughter to a state school or a seminary. Then if the son needs some extra coaching, the parents themselves escort him to an academy. But a daughter is persuaded, nay pressurised, to study at home in case of any deficiency in studies as parents have no time to pick and drop her daily for a coaching centre. The idea of personal conveyance for girls doesn’t exist in our society. A girl looks to her brother or father for riding pillion to the desired place.

The unabated incidents of trespassing girls’ safety and respect in our society further make it near to impossible for girls to go solo to exercise their right of education. Every now and then, a viral video shows a dissolute boy trying to harass a girl clad in burqa going alone on the road. Such incidents make parents ultra conscious about the security of girls, and in their mind they decide to keep them within the four walls of their houses.

A son can use a mobile phone for “studies”, but it is deemed a taboo for a girl in the middle class. A boy can go to his friends to take “study notes” if he misses any lectures, but such a luxury is not available for a girl. Seen in this context, a girl needs a mobile phone more than a boy does. Consequently, a girl is demotivated to get education to educate next generations.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2024.

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