Girls gaining ground

Diminishing presence of females in the country’s population as their ratio to that of males is being projected in the media more frequently nowadays than in the days past. Thanks to the currently emerging “MeToo” platform, the females, particularly in the elite sections of society, are coming out of their time-honoured shell as it were, with disclosures of episodes portraying the males, also in the elite sections, as aggressors indulging in unedifying acts. While some episodes have reportedly taken place not too recently, doubts about their veracity are surfacing in many cases, particularly where persons of standing in society including pontiffs and clergy as well as those in high posts in both government and corporate sector, not to forget a few in the noble calling of teaching, even in prestigious institutions. The battle lines are getting thicker as females are levelling sexual assault charges and a few facing the charges have hastened to issue press statements denouncing the allegations. The era of society favouring the custom of confining the females in the family to the four walls of their dwelling has clearly passed into the pages of the land’s long history, except to an increasing extent still in vogue in rural parts. While the females, educated and living in urban environs are entering the male bastion of workplace, the number of reports in the media about males versus females is bound to rise in days ahead. The culture of describing females as the weaker gender seems to have lost its age-old meaning, given their increasing presence in various theatres of life dominated by males until not too long ago. Girls have already demonstrated their virtual victory over boys at school stage by outnumbering boys in passing public examinations with distinction. That feature has been cemented further by significant rise in the number of girls entering the portals of colleges and universities earning degrees in the various subjects. Nobody can miss the conspicuous feature of females in professions such as engineering, medicine, law, administration and so on. A cross-country survey conducted recently in the country has brought out that seven out of 10 teenage girls want to finish graduation, three in four don’t want to marry before they turn 21 and so on. While girls in the land have shown their resolve with career aspirations on an unprecedented scale, they are required to be partners instead of adversaries as it were of their male colleagues in workplaces not to be at the receiving end of male assaults or at the giving end of levelling charges against males. The Kannada idiom “Yeradu kai seridare chappale” clinches the debate.