Women have always belonged to
someone else in the sense that they don’t have an identity of their own. They
are someone’s wife, someone’s mother or someone’s daughter, as if their very
existence depends upon the relationship they share with a man. While men rarely define themselves relationally.
Even now, there are
traditions that favor men over women. The one that bothers me is the surname
change. Why is it that the woman has to give up her surname and take up her
husband’s? Why is it that a woman is not equally responsible to continue the
family legacy as a man is? It is the sexist culture that demands the surname
change to happen after a woman is married.
I get it that when two people
fall in love and decide to get married, thinking about changing your last name
is not a concern. But your name is your identity and giving a part of it up is
like diluting it in a way.
The reason many women don’t
object to this is because they still think that men hold a higher position than
them. Which is why I see so many girls aged eighteen giving up education and getting
married. The very idea of a female giving up her education shows that our
society has a long way to go to achieve equality. Because for a fact, I know
there many humans out there who still pray they don’t have a female child and
who think that the best they can do for their daughters is to get them married
off so early that they spend the rest of their life in servitude.
I agree that many girls want
to get married right from the age of fifteen, but wanting to be financially
dependent on someone for the rest of your life just shows that our society is
doing something wrong to give rise to such patriarchal thinking.
It is hard to expect a man to have an objection
to this because they enjoy their privileged position but women need to take a
stand instead of just getting carried away into this male-dominated world.
As long as the inequality of
the sexes continues, so will rape, so will dowry and so will other forms of
violence against women.
TAKE A STAND.
