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Women's Health Matters

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The events around World Woman’s Day last week brought out the grim state of health and power women enjoy in our society yet again. Women have probably realized by now that their dependence on “chivalrous” and “caring” male partners over history has not done them much good, and have finally decided to take up their cudgel, at least in politics.
Medical research has shown that women’s health matters to society. Weak anemic mothers with soft fragile bones produce weak low birth-weight babies, even male ones. And the short-sightedness of feeding iron and calcium to our women only during pregnancy while neglecting them the rest of their lives, can’t make them robust quickly enough to bring forth a healthy next gen. Kerala is the state that has shown by example, how educating and empowering women can make a strong and healthy society.
I wonder whether Aishwariya Rai Bacchan who adorns the Wikipedia page on ‘Women in India’, also personify health and power, as she does beauty (often skin deep and short lasting) and charm (that males like to rate women on!). A recent survey (NFHS-3) found 3 of every 4 pregnant Indian women to be anemic (deficient in iron), and a quarter to be osteoporotic (deficient in calcium and vitamin D). Women in Uttar Pradesh have a shorter life expectancy than males, while those in Kerala live 6 years longer than them. Women are much more prone to depression and physical abuse. They suffer from cancers of the cervix and breast, and do not have adequate organized women-manned health check up facilities for their detection and treatment.
Women have been a vulnerable lot all along; they had to burn themselves at the pyre of their dead husbands, hide their faces from the sun and society, serve as Devdasis according to the Almighty’s wish conveyed to them through male priests, and subjected to trafficking and exploitation. Very few men, like Ram Mohun Roy, have had the courage to stand up for them!
In many places and many homes, disrimination against women starts even before they are born. The present technology-aided practice of female feticide continues in several states, with an excess of deprived hungry men destroying the subtle balance of society with crimes against women. The girl child is discriminated in many homes with regard to food, education, property and rights.
What surprises me though is that traumatized embarassed young women who have borne daughters are more scared of their mothers-in-law, whom they blame for their plight, than their husbands! It is imaginable what the elder woman might have gone through in her “bahu” days in the same home, but what baffles me is how she turns colour and becomes the offender on becoming “saas”, and bullies her helpless “bahu”, disregarding all the resolves she made 20 years ago! In fact, she often perpetuates the practice of dowry that prevails unabated despite the strict laws on paper.
Educating our girl child and empowering them can work wonders in UP too, provided of course our “saas” undergoes a change of heart and permits it! 
As published in HT City, Hindusatn Times (Lucknow edition) dated 14th March, 2010
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