'Challenge the dogma associated with women'

Reformation on attitudes against women stressed

The path towards empowerment of women begins with challenging the rationale that has been taught about women for generations, said Corinne Kumar, founder member of Vimochana, here on Friday.

She was delivering the key-note address on a workshop ‘Atrocities on women: Gender-Law- Resistance’, organised as part of the 108th Womens day celebrations, by the Samsthe and Karnataka Mahila Dourjanya Virodhi Okkoota.

She lamented the manner in which some women still survive, without basic awareness of their rights and subject to continuous harassment and said that pages of history should be re-written with a women’s perspective.

“We (women) need to weave together our personal stories and personal discourses, so as to move into a terrain, where knowledge is easily accessible for us,” she said.

Speaking on the ‘new paradigms of politics’, she said that the ethic of care has been removed in the political fronts of the country. However, women in politics, can offer compassion and revive the course of politics for the welfare of the people.

Calling upon women to acquire more knowledge, she said that the knowledge will offer women ways for justice, a retroactive justice for a community which has been denied for the same for eons, she added. C Basavaraju, Registrar, University of Mysore, said that despite the enactment of several laws in the country, instances of sexual harassment of women has continued unabated in the country. 

He said that the ‘local’ denial of rights for women, violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Quoting from historian Max Muellers description of women in India, that women in India “identify their life in the lives of men and death with the lives of their husband”, he said that a reformation regarding this attitude was necessary.