Gender Equity in Digital Age
Uddipana Khataniar
Feminism as a concept has always confused a huge chunk of the population – either as a result of a veil of nuanced and intentional misinterpretation or as a thought structure failing to consider perspectives. As a young child, I was privileged enough to be unable to realize and recognize the deeply structural, societal and institutional prejudices and vices against girls and women. When I reached adolescence, I was exposed to a barrage of events and understandings that made the experience of transforming into womanhood a rather unbecoming metamorphosis. The intake of various forms of information under the wide category of discrimination against your sex and gender tends to create a bearer of empathy within you, as it did within me. As a young adult susceptible to being a part of pop culture (modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media and aimed especially at younger people) , the great treasury of opinions, thoughts, ideas can certainly be overwhelming. This attribute of being overwhelmed must be accompanied by the need of critical thinking and deep-seated analysis of every adoptable opinion that we frequently come across. Newer generations of the internet are being subjected to a rise of witnessing or participating in an extremely hostile attitude against women. This attitude makes space neither for a feeling of embarrassment to be the owner of such views nor for compassion. The ‘online world’ or the ‘cyber world’ is both surreptitiously and boldly slipping into the real and material world of ours through actions of individuals. Here, the term ‘individuals’ is used loosely as evidence suggests otherwise. The culture that is brewing this hostile and loathsome attitude against women is a collective involvement. The internet holds a bombardment of various forms of mass media that preach and preach the methods for achieving peak ‘ manhood ‘ by taking support of versatile sources that might make a rational person faint. These versatile acts of preaching, however, always hold a common denominator- eradicating the existence of free choice for women. This certain notion is a tangible reality for the women of Afghanistan, Iraq and certainly many other places. Under the Taliban rule, the women are constantly drowning in the quick sand of having their identities stripped away. Harrowing rules and laws imposed against women by the Taliban regime under the guise of religious teachings have caused the women to live in a state of unprecedented misery and unheard of oppression. Although not an official term, ‘ gender apartheid’ is an apt description of the condition of women in Afghanistan. Women are being ripped of respect and free choice by being refused of education, right to work, right to independence. Women are deprived of their identity as human beings. An anonymous female teacher in Afghanistan provides the outside world a brief glimpse of the condition of the women in Afghanistan: “In my province we had girls that could be singers, professors, athletes and politicians. Now we have nothing left. All of those talents were arrested, left the country, or now live in hiding. Families rush to marry their daughters because they are afraid the Taliban may take them for marriage. Most girls are forced to marry. This is a nightmare I never imagined to happen.”
When we talk of women, girls are also included by extension. Young girls do not only witness the horror of growing into a woman under these conditions but also experience the wrath of these inhumane rules. The Iraqi parliament is on the verge of passing a new law that would allow men to marry girls as young as nine years old by lowering the legal age of consent from 18 to 9 years old. Conservatives belonging to the Shia sect of Islam dominate the parliament and have proposed a revision of the ‘personal status law’. Critics opine that this law will be stripping women of all decisions. This law will facilitate young girls to be married off early and transfer all family decisions in the hands of religious authorities.
In the contemporary world where the struggle of women for identity and equity should be an aged concept, it still remains inside the chained constraints of an ideal reality. The digital dimension is a large part of our (the new generations) lives. The misogynistic and anti-women ideas that are polluting the internet are further polluting the impressionable minds. Actions are the fruits of the mind. The inflation of sexual violence cases committed by men of different age groups in the newer times is indeed an example of this. If we discuss in relation to the online world, the anti-women indoctrination through forms of mass media such as podcasts and videos is accelerated through lack of proper repercussions. The misogynistic and marginal criminal comments and opinions that are so openly shared by users of various social media platforms in forums and communities are enabled by anonymity and by implication, absence of consequences and accountability. These violent, anti-social ideas injected into a young man create an inhumane person which will prove to be a threat in the reformation of a balanced society. One way to battle this eventuality is by regulating social media usage for young people. The Australian Government led by Anthony Albanese has implemented this by approving the Social Media Minimum Age bill on November 28, 2024. This law prevents children under 16 from accessing social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc setting a benchmark for jurisdictions across the world.
We must learn gender equity in order to map out a better functioning society as the newer generations. Gender equity endeavours to make gains equivalent for all citizens by being fair and balanced in resource allocation and opportunities. It entails the acknowledgment that women might not be on the same playing field as men due to past and present historical and societal disadvantages. We must eliminate the toxic culture that has materialised on the internet and that is in the process of constant evolution. Gender issues should be discussed in large groups constituting non-biased gender inclusion in order to not make it a topic of alienation and a subject of apathy. A society to look forward to will fade away into a distorted and incongruous world if we do not operate against the vanity of oppression promptly.