Gender equality The traditional roles of women in our society have changed over the years but a lot

of the roles are still the same and the progress towards a truly equal society is still slow. Gender inequality is considered one of the greatest evils of our society. A chauvinist male would say that women have no role in the working world and all their work should be confined to the walls of the home, whereas a staunch feminist would trash all that and say that women can do any role that she aims to do and they are truly equal. The feminist movement has made a lot of things possible, that were previously inconceivable but our society is still far from ideal. The experiences of a 49 year old Indian woman prove that we still have to a long path ahead of us before we realize our goal of a truly equal society. This woman speaks about she has seen the changes see has seen among the roles of women and how her culture still affects the role of women in society. Born exactly after 14 years of Indias independence from the British rule in a small town in western India, she speaks about how the society was adopting to the changes of the in the roles of women in her time. In her earlier years, she did go to school and high school but college was considered inconsequential for women during her time. Her brothers were allowed to go to college as soon as they graduated from high school but she had to fight her way to college. She was always reminded that her college expenses were a burden. Even when she was in school she was expected to learn to cook and housekeep from a very young age. She was barely in first year of college when her parents got her married to a boy they had chosen. She moved to the city and hard a time adjusting to her new life in the city. She was not allowed to continue her education and all her decisions were made for her by her husband. He would rarely ask her for her opinion and even if he did, the

ultimate decision was his to make. She says that her grandmother had studied more than her, but ultimately even her grandmother had to confine herself to her traditional gender role. However she believes that her children today have a better life than she had. She has a boy and a girl but both are treated equally and given the same opportunities. She recognizes that her role is more or less set and very different from the lives of other women of her age around her (she lives in a culture that is different than hers as she moved to the States a few years ago) but she is trying to improve her children lives by giving them opportunities that were denied to her while still maintaining certain values of her culture. She says that though there are changes that she is glad of, she believes that more efforts need to be made in her cultural values that are too restricting for women in the society. Her experiences show that women are still considered weak in the society. It is a fact that physically they may be weaker than men but intellectually they are not the weaker sex. Women in our society may have stepped out of the walls of the home but they are not allowed too far. Women have been underpaid and majority decision making positions are almost always filled by men. They limit how far a woman can go and if she aspires to go higher she is either crushed or placed in a position where her other responsibilities are neglected. Even culturally in India most families do not allow a woman to pick her own husband and they rarely allow married women to work. The husband controls the finances and therefore makes all the decisions. All this just shows that even with voting rights and being allowed to work, some fundamental rights that are granted to men are still in need to be fought for by women.