The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including December 1, which is World AIDS Day, and December 6, which marks the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.

Being a South Asian, I am quite aware of the extreme levels of violence women had been subjected to and are still being made hostage of. How can we change this? Many of us men are not only more aware about the plight of women, but also gender sensitized now.

This realization is a reality out of everyday statistics. If you are a lender of micro finance projects in Bangladesh, you will prefer your loan would go to a woman, because it is proven, through case studies, that women are more committed and honest then the menfolk. If you want to know the best students at any grade level, at least in Pakistan, it would always be women who are performing better than men, and the margin is increasing every year.

Now, if women are equally talented, if not more, as well as more committed and honest than men, why is it that they are still not being empowered to make their own choices? Why are they still the underpaid of our workforce?

Is this the Capitalist system we should blame? Marxists may nod in agreement. But then Karl Marx himself discriminates between men and women when he suggests that women are to be in the household and men in the workplace. According to Marx, the household is the place of work for women. Well he might have predicted that women would be exploited and would be underpaid under a capitalist system, if their wages are left to market forces, and thus recommends that women need to be in the household and the household work needs to be recognised. There is a lot of sense in his theory but it is a bit impractical and also would not find many proponents among women themselves, who would like to use their brains when education and ideas matter and have become pre-requisites for better livelihoods.

If you think about it, Capitalism takes men and women as equals, as both are labor. So then why do women earn less than men in a system which theoretically doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender? Like all systems, once put to practice, the biases of the practitioners and proponents stale them. The same is true for Capitalism. This also means that there is room for improvement, and no need for discontent.

We, the educated or enlightened, know and realise women need to be empowered against discrimination, violence and undue differentiation. One way or an efficient way/option for women againt this is that they empower themselves economically. Economic empowerment would come through education.

Women have proven themselves, long ago, that they are no less then men. If anything, they are more committed. So why is it that no government in South Asia has yet devised a specific policy to exploit its more committed work force? Why do women still earn less than men? What social and economic institutional obstacles are there, which result in such low levels of women employment in the South? Why are there on an average huge education inequalities prevalent in the among men and women? Is there a specific education policy for women?

If women are to be empowered, these questions need elaborate scrutiny. There is a need for governmental intervention as well as international leverage. This is one way to allow women to get hold of their own destiny without the usual socio-economic institutional interruptions and discriminations they have been subjected to.