Gender discrimination – Prof. Rahmat Karim Baig
Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Lahore from Peshawar. As the bus was full and many kids were supposed to pass their time in the laps of their parents and so had not been considered to deserve a seat on payment and were thus to be more in the custody of Allah and less by the parents. To me it seemed as street Children that has now been renamed State Children; left in the central walkway i.e. aisle where they had to pass the 6 hour journey as they could not sit in the lap of their parents but the male children were given priority by their parents and the females kids were considered as not deserving a seat or a lap of the parent so the girls most of the time slept on the floor of the aisle just like a trash, valueless; and having no human dignity and disregarded as a piece of waste material.
The mothers fixed headphones, opened the mini screens and listened to the dialogues on headphones and watched the English Film actions progress. They least cared for their kids and the journey continued. When the boys cried they were caressed and given pop corns by their parents but if a female kid cried she was suppressed by their mothers as it distracted them from listening to the dialogues of the English Films. This is the way of rearing kids in the modern age. The concept of gender discrimination is a brain child of certain thinkers. The discrimination is natural and has been designed according to their physical qualities but what we have to say should be that there should be no priority among children of either sex and should be given equal status, treatment and education while raising kids inside the family circle. The parents have to be careful about it .The behavior of the society comes later.
This behavior of the mothers hurt me very much and reminded me of a recent debate in Chitral Press Club, on the rights of males and females with special focus on the rights of females as well as the issue of gender discrimination. The mothers in that Bus disregarded their female kids but gave more importance to baby boys. This means that the male vs. female discrimination begins at the lap of the mother and it is only her creation, not to be hurled at the fathers as is generally shouted by the feminists. All the discrimination begins from home and initiated by the mothers, grand- mothers and aunts, especially from the side of the mothers but the father is criticized for being a dictator, a boss in the family, giving priority to sons at the cost of daughters.
In fact the mothers start this discrimination from the time the boy baby is born and the birth of a female baby is disliked and looked down upon. The lady mentioned above was an educated one, understood English Film dialogues but she took the boy In her lap from time to time but never did the same to her baby daughter. Why to blame the FATHERS as the main actor in this life long drama? This is my own eyewitness account of a journey where the kids and their parents were journeying and I was just a spectator, not supposed to take part in the social discrimination drama.
The real psyche behind this discriminatory social structure has its roots in our society- whether Chitrali, Pathan, or Punjabi alike -In fact the fair sex has forgotten the duty given by the Creator that Allah created her physical structure in a way that requires a companionship of a male or she will suffer some physical problem after her puberty as part of her biological process. The Biological process is inherent, it cannot be reversed or engineered according to our wishes. Every couple goes through this process but gets not a single child even after their best efforts, while another couple procreates only sons and no daughter and a third group in the same line gets daughters continuously but gets no son. Can they get desired results from the same sex process? From the same biological process some get handicapped children, dumb, deaf, blind, crippled, legless, armless and so on, while others get 100% healthy children with average or above average IQ. Has any couple been able to upgrade their black baby into a white baby?
All this is a natural process and procreation is a part of it whether in married form or unmarried form but science has not progressed to such an extent that it could give 100% eyesight to a natural blind baby or a baby to a couple without having the basic seeds unless they transfer healthy genes from a third person to either of the spouses. Both males and females have got limited rights to live and have to be content with what they have got. Independence of women carries no sense except open and unbridled prostitution. The Divine Comedy is too complex to be understood by a tiny creature like human species…
Prof. Rahmat Karim Baig
