Education, Women and Society

“Our Women have more rights than Women of other countries but there are large areas wherein women are suffering, where may be they are not conscious about their own rights”

-Gulshan(1975)

Education without a vacillation has an important functional, instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is revealed when someone ask the question ‘What is the purpose of education?’. The answer too often, are ‘to acquire qualifications for employment/upward mobility’, ‘wider/higher (in terms of income) opportunities’ and ‘to meet the needs for trained human power in diverse field for national development’. But in its deepest sense, education is not instrumentalist. That is to say it is not justified outside of itself because it leads to acquisition of formal skills. A child enters in a school at the age of 4-5 and leave the school around the age of 17-18, it means most of his/her childhood is being spent in a boundary of a school where he/she learns how to live, how to adjust with the society, how to live and work for the future. So we can see that  the basic stage of a human being’s life  is completely influenced by the Education.

When we talk about education, the very first thing which came in our mind is a Mother. A child receives the informal education from his/her mother after birth. She gives the knowledge of the world, of the society and tries to make her child educated. But our society forget about that Mother or we can say forget about Women in education fields. We all respect our Mother, our sisters and we perform all our duties towards them happily then why we cannot respect and understand the value and importance of others’ Mothers and sisters? Though we have completed the 68 years of independence, though we are living in developing world where modernization, urbanization processes have been taking place to make our society, our nation a fully developed one. But in this development process or rather we can say in this modernization period where Women exists? What is their position in our society? Where are their rights? Where are their freedom? Till today, our parents prefer to have a male child and a girl child is killed before her birth. We can see end number of  cases related to female infanticides which have been filed in police stations. 

In the Indian Constitution, education is both a Union and a State subject.The Indian government has made a constitutional act of Education (Right To Education) in August 4, 2009 where it has been written that it is the duty of parents to send their children to school to receive education irrespective of sex. But our society, the mindset of the parents is still the same, nothing has been changed or rather we can say change is happening once in a bluemoon situation. Our society always speaks about history, traditions, cultures then why it always disdain the importance of Women Education which has been written in our  ancient Vedas, Upanishadas and where our encestors like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rani Laxmibaihave already raise their voice for the education of Women? Ironically, Women are preached in the name of Goddesses but in real world Women are treated as the ‘object’ not as a ‘subject’ where they are encouraged to look sexy and attractive to men but when an attractive woman is raped, most of  the time our society thinks she must have ‘asking for it’. 

Though it is gradually increasing, the female literacy rate in India is less than male literacy rate where female literacy rate is 60.6% and the male literacy rate is 81.3%. In rural areas, girls continue to be less well-educated than boys. Only through the proper Education, the crimes against women can be reduced, women will come to know what their rights, what is their position along with men, they will become self-dependent both economically and mentally because Education is something which tells us about the values of life, it teaches us about our rights and duties and most important, it teaches us about the Humanity. In an ethnic community like bishnupriya manipuri also, we can see the differentiation of women easily where girls are prefer to be kept inside the house and prepare them for wedding. Our community is blessed with rich culture and tradition where we keep Women in the top most place but in real scenario, still women are suffering, women are asking for their rights and the most important thing, women are being deprived from education.The mindset and the outlook of the people, of the society can be change  only if the education takes place because a proper educated person will never do injustice to the women, will always raise his/her voice against crimes and injustices against women.

Society is incomplete without Women and no society can exists without Women. Girl education is must for a surpassing society. Time has come to realize the importance of Women Education, because education is the only way to make a better and developed society and moreover, a developed nation. It is our responsibility, the culpability of the Youth to understand the duties towards Women and also create the awareness among the people to send their girl child to school, to make them aware about the consequences of the Education to build a foster society. It is for girl education only; MalalaYousafzai, a young Pakistani activist was attacked by the terrorist group of Pakistan but still she has been raising her voice for the girl education which leads her to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Change is necessary, especially in a world where we are living in a modern and developing era and for that we, the young people should take the very first step just like MalalaYousafzai so that we can frame a better society, exceeding nation not only for us but also for the future generation.

Writer: official at Wipro Kolkata