Has anything changed? Women have been oppressed and I think, will be forever. To breakout from a mould that took centuries to form, is no easy task. The change is an urban phenomenon, restricted to a small percentage of the educated. Women helping other women, creating awareness of their rights, spreading education...these are few things we women can do in our sphere of influence.
Chivalry is just a gallant gesture
Ways to keep her heart ever open!
A social gesture saved for outdoors
Fools no one, not even the woman.
A useless help with a mundane job.
A simple help with a closed door.
Damned if you accept
Damned if you don’t!
Let that door be the useful one
The one that opens the machine
That washes laundry-his and hers.
Sit her at the table gracious
Let that platter placed before her
Often have food cooked by him.
Indoors the bind is well in place
Moulded spaces fenced and definite
Set patterns ingrained from birth.
Look from above at a woman’s life
An invisible cage reveals itself
With bars designed to keep her within.
Damned if you accept
Damned if you don’t!
Show that skin in skimpy clothes
A wash-proof label stick so hard
A different label sticks as hard
Faster she moves deeper she goes
A chosen shackle willingly borne
Internalized as a way of life,
In times when the race was not
As fierce and furious as is now.
Maybe this is self-oppression?
With no one to blame but the times?
Damned if you accept
Damned if you don’t!
© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved
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