When we speak of empowering someone, it’s about pushing them above on the road to self-autonomy toward self-fulfillment. It’s about eliminating the obstacles that impede their development. To empower someone is to catalyse their being. Society, at its core, has been unfair to women, since its inception. Women’s right to be is still debated. Freedom, albeit it exists in theory, does not translate in real life.
So when world leaders boast of women’s empowerment, we know a lot has changed, but a lot of it is still in theory. Take this year’s Paris Olympics, for example. They exclaimed how it was the first time in Olympic history we were witnessing 50-50 gender parity in the games. Where this was a long time coming indeed, it did not translate into equitable treatment between male and female athletes. There were instances of sexism in the way athletes were recorded, in the way commentators remarked about them, or in the way news portals reported them.
It took the Internet no time to declare Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who is a woman, a biological man because she was too strong for her own good. When the entire country couldn’t have been less perturbed by Vinesh Phogat as she fought for her life protesting against the WFI chief last year, everybody is suddenly on her side today. She defeated the world champion and was on her way to collecting Gold for India when she was disqualified from the Olympics for weighing 100 grams more than the permissible limit on the day of her final match against Sarah Hildebrandt. People were pissed and the sentiment was understandable. But their new-found support for Phogat became a hate-post against Khelif.
How does supporting one woman become about pulling down another? Why do we always pit women against each other? If I love Taylor Swift, I can like Beyoncé too, and Adele, and Ariana Grande. Love for one doesn’t mean hate for the rest. ‘Two women can’t get along with each other’ – where does this assumption come from?
But that’s what happens, right? For women, even appreciation comes at the cost of degradation of another. The misogyny is deep-rooted. We can’t accept them in entirety because that’ll be too much. We don’t like women too much. Too strong, too weak, too opinionated, too quiet, too loud.
If we want to speak of morality and fairness of things, we could have also questioned how a convicted child-rapist was allowed to be a part of the Olympics. But not many questioned that, at least to this extent. Somehow, it always becomes about women, one way or another. Hating women is easy. That’s been the way of the world since the beginning.
So, when we speak of women’s empowerment, let’s also address the internal biases. Equal representation at the Olympics did not translate to equal treatment among the athletes. The numbers can only do so much if their contexts remain unseen. You’re not an ally if you’re playing divide and rule, if your support is one-sided, if you don’t realise that numbers don’t translate into reality.