Spice of Life: Living with the famed Mighty Girl Effect
All fathers traverse into understanding humans due to the empathetic learning that comes from witnessing the challenges their daughters face as they grow up, a journey that has been famously dubbed “The Mighty Girl Effect”
“Hey Dad… Come and see how we are looking” exclaimed my lovely daughters in a synchronous tone. Standing glued to each other next to the wall, they were portraying Goddess Durga. In a hilarious tone, I quipped that you are looking great, but why do you need four arms? Very innocently, the younger one submitted: “Bahut kaam hote hain, aap ko nahi pata (We have a lot of work to do, you won’t understand).”
The answer from a five-year-old shook me to the core and involuntarily set me off on a journey of introspection in a bid to understand the essence of her observation.
I gazed at my better half, who was busy preparing meals for us after completing all household chores. The contemplation was yielding some heart-wrenching thoughts which are difficult to jot down into words. Working tirelessly for hours without proper rest is their daily routine, which they embrace with a poise. Facing complaints and sarcasm without dwindling from their responsibilities is also a lived reality.
A proponent of gender equality since my days in college, my views became more concrete after the birth of my daughters. My sensitivity to gender inequality during debates and discussions has earned me the label of “staunch feminist”. But in reality, gender parity and equity needs to be highlighted for creation of an equitable and inclusive world.
In my personal opinion, if we look at the “Beti bachao, Beti padhao” campaign from a psychological perspective, we can easily make out even insensitive fathers traverse into understanding humans due to the vicarious and empathetic learning that comes from witnessing the challenges their daughters face as they grow up, a journey that has been famously dubbed “The Mighty Girl Effect”.
The immensity of women can be gauged by the ease with which they multitask, the efforts put to comply with duties despite shunting on to the Mommy track in the past, even by leading organisations globally. This issue of track change has been addressed satisfactorily in today’s world, but the ceiling is made up of toughened glass. Beating the long standing biases and prejudices, empowered women are playing a pivotal role in a nation’s growth and institutional support is needed for the same to prosper further.
The gender gap in every strata and field has to be closed with suitable interventions and educating young girls is one of the most important remedies. Idealsing the present-era woman with Sita or Gargi is not justified as in that era, they were enjoying supreme rights and equality along with possessions in the form of worldly wealth.
Collective activism is the key strategy, through which, changes can be percolated even at the grass root level. #EmbraceEquity, the campaign theme for International Women’s Day 2023 focuses on the need for not only equal opportunities, but equitable actions.
Embracing equity, diversity, inclusion and ultimately reaching the zenith through equality is a pretty fair action plan. Deeply entrenched patriarchal and patrilineal traditions and norms need to be addressed properly to enable mighty gender to realise their potential for gender responsive change.
nmvets220@gmail.com
(The writer is associate professor at Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana)
