Women Shattering Ceilings
When you think of the word “Woman”, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Well, the first thing that comes to my mind was the varied roles that a woman plays all her life. The first person that came to my mind was my mother. Women have, for centuries, unknowingly, taken on roles that are far beyond anyone’s capacity to handle. Women are so special that they are born with the gift of not only creating life but have also been given the strength to bring that life-form into this world, and that strength is nothing short of Divine.
Imagine being a person who must carry not only her weight but also the weight of her unborn child, all of this on her own two feet. She also must handle the mood swings that all her family members go through and be there for them when they need her. Imagine cooking food for five people, three to four times a day, listen to your children’s tantrums regarding the taste or choice of the food prepared and still stay cheerful. Get you ready for school or college, prepare your lunchbox, make sure you look spic and span, all the time, going to the office, handling all kinds of people and their varied egos, come back home, tired and then handle the ego of your better half at times. And you still think being a woman is easy? Handling roles with such finesse and making them look like cakewalk is easy? Well, no.
But somehow, all of us have forgotten their vital contributions while we went on through our lives. And we women, though with great discomfort, have come to accept that this is what we are limited to and this is how it should be. But some women have realized that they are made for much bigger things in life than just being a wife, mother and a homemaker.
Women are always told that the expanse of our dreams can be only so big if we do not break that ceiling. We are always told to fear the ceiling like an expert storyteller tells children to fear ghosts and evil spirits through his stories. We are made to feel comfortable with the thought of compromising on our dreams because the sky is not the limit for us. It does not exist for us in the first place.
But some women have been brave enough to keep their heads up and aim for the skies at a time when they were always told to keep their heads down. As Oscar Wilde famously said, “We are all pigs in the same gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. And these women did just that.
She made broken look beautiful
and strong look invincible.
She walked with the Universe
on her shoulders and made it
look like a pair of wings.
Savitribai Phule (First Female Educationist and Feminist):
Savitribai Phule did not get the opportunity to enrol herself to a proper school as she belonged to a lower caste and it is no surprise how the caste system in our country impacted so many people in so many different and unimaginable ways.
Thanks to her marriage to Jyotirao Phule at the tender age of 10, who encouraged her to dream big, she could finally fulfil her dream of getting proper access to education.
As her academic career advanced, Savitribai, along with her husband, founded an all-girls school to spread the benefit of education to all the underprivileged girls in the village. Now, it would be a lie to say that she did not face any obstacles while on her journey to empower women through education.
People pelted stones at her, called her all kinds of menial names, dissuaded her from the path that she had set her foot on. The insults went to such an extreme that people even threw cow-dung at her to deter her from her path. An insult of this kind is enough for anyone to give up on their dreams and life altogether.
But she was determined to empower the women around her so that we, the women of today, do not have to face the struggles they faced to get access to an essential facility called education.
This struggle bore results that would make her a legend for centuries to come. She went on to become the first female educationist of India, thus breaking millions of barriers for the future generations of women.
Though her life met an early an unfortunate end due to plague, there is no denying that her role in women empowerment and feminism brought about some major changes in how women and their roles are being perceived today. We do have a long way to go, but we can at least thank someone who thought of gender equality at a time when it was a huge taboo.
Shanti Tigga (First Female Jawan):
This woman’s story is extraordinary, to say the least! Now, in a world where, when someone says the word ‘soldier’ all we can think of is a man in a camouflage uniform, she was the one to break that perception. She was the FIRST female jawan of the Indian Army and an even more wonderful fact is that she achieved this feat at the age of 35, with two children by her side.
She trounced all of her male colleagues in physical tests conducted in the Armed Forces like completing a 50 m run in just 12 seconds, defeating all her male counterparts in a 1.5 km run with 5 seconds to spare! Just a reminder that she did all this at the age of 35!
She was a highly skilled marksman too, which helped her earn the highest position of a marksman. (Marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting, where the target is at a longer-than-usual distance).
However, her life was not free of obstacles. In 2013, some perpetrators abducted her and a few days later, she was found tied to a railway post, blindfolded. While being treated at a hospital, she was found hanging in her hospital room, thus putting a tragic end to her glorious and trailblazing life.
Her short life inspired some path-breaking changes in the male-dominated Defense Forces which has inspired and made way for many women to join any section of the Defense Forces.
Kadambini Ganguly (First Female Graduate):
Kadambini, along with Chandramukhi Basu, was the first female graduates, not only from India but also from the entire British Empire. Now that is some feat!
Today, when being a graduate seems like a cakewalk, it pales in comparison to the 1880s. She studied medicine at the Calcutta Medical College, thus becoming one of the first two women doctors to qualify to practise western medicine.
But as always, it was never easy being a woman back then. At a time when women were considered a burden by the family, a birthing machine by the husbands and were forced to bow down to rules set by the patriarchs; these achievements only go on to show how being a woman is the most supreme gift that any man could have.
Talking of obstacles, she faced fair opposition from her teaching staff and the other people of the society. One of the magazine editors even called her a ‘whore’ for her heroic acts dedicated towards women liberation.
But as they say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. She dragged the editor of the magazine to the court and also won the lawsuit! Women Power Rocks!
Anandi Gopal Joshi (First Female Doctor):
Anandi became the first woman doctor and was first qualified to practice Western medicine. While it is very inspiring to know that she achieved such a tough feat at such a young age, the story behind her decision to pursue Medicine is even more so.
Anandi got married at the tender age of nine to a 30-year-old widower, Gopalrao Joshi, who worked as a postal clerk. Even though Gopal knew that he had married a child, he strongly supported women’s education and was hence, considered a progressive thinker during those times.
Anandi was just 14 years old when she first became a mother, but the baby died just 10 days later due to lack of proper medical care and facilities. As we all know, as advanced the healthcare facilities are today, it was not the case two centuries ago.
This incident caused her immense trauma and grief. Disturbed by this, she decided to not sit quiet and rather channelize her grief and pain towards improving the healthcare sector in India. And hence, she told her husband that she wanted to become a doctor to provide people access to better healthcare facilities.
Her husband was equally supportive of her decision and gave her all the help she needed to realize her dream.
She applied to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and was given admission. She began her training at the age of just 19.
However, she was not feeling well while staying in America due to several factors that added to her health woes like unfamiliar diet, weather conditions, etc. She was diagnosed with Tuberculosis or TB. However, that did not deter her from her determination to complete her MD in Medicine.
Her journey was so inspiring that she even received a congratulatory message from the Queen of England, Queen Victoria herself! Talk about inspiration and adulation!
But, her beautiful life was cut short when she passed away at the age of just 22 due to TB. Even though her life was short, her contributions to the world of Medicine and Feminism overall have broken barriers in a tough and male-dominated field like Medicine.
Cornelia Sorabjee (First Female Lawyer):
Cornelia was the first female to graduate from Bombay University and the first woman in the world to study Law at the prestigious Oxford University and consequently became the first female lawyer in India! (IKR!)
After becoming the first female graduate of the Bombay University, she wrote to the National Indian Association for assistance in completing her further studies.
She received a lot of support from her English friends (her mother being an Englishwoman named Francina Ford) and funds came pouring in for her from people with an esteemed reputation like Florence Nightingale, Mary Hobhouse, Sir William Wedderburn, and others.
Sorabji also achieved another milestone by becoming the first-ever woman to be admitted as a reader to the Codrington Library of All Souls College, Oxford in 1890.
It is so hard to imagine that as a woman, you were not even allowed to read books at a library because, at that time, women were restricted only to matters of the kitchen and were only thought as gossip-mongers at tea parties and dinners.
So it is heartening to read that a woman, that to an Indian, became the first-ever woman to be permitted to read in a library. Kudos to her!
The above women mentioned is just a tip of the huge iceberg of women that India has produced over centuries.
My decision to take Indian women as my superwomen was a conscious one as I wanted to showcase that while the West has produced some incredibly successful women with the highest credentials to their names, India is not far behind.
India is a vast country, with a third of the whole mankind residing here, has left many of the most developed countries behind in terms of inventions and producing some incredible woman achievers.
It is just because of our over-obsession with the Western culture that has led us to not being aware of such jewels that grew on this very soil that we grew up on.
I hope these women inspire more women out there to realize their dreams with even more enthusiasm as the obstacles we face in achieving them are minuscule in front of what they faced. So let us dream bigger and dream brighter!
