It is a very famous saying that men make houses, women make homes. We do not need to go far, just a glimpse at our immediate surroundings, and we will see our mother, sister(s), wife toiling day and night to make our houses homes. As per a New York times report, If American women earned minimum wage for the unpaid work they do around the house and caring for relatives, they would have made $1.5 trillion in the year 2018. This is the situation in America where there are 15.7 crore women, for a country as populous as India and women population of about 65.63 crore, the calculation of the amount of unpaid work seems to be inestimable. There is a perception among some men that women do not do anything, they find their work to be easy and menial, and have a domineering behaviour towards women. Some men have a desire to overpower their female counterparts and expect them to dance to their tune. This idea and such behaviour seems ludicrous when we ponder over the above mentioned fact that if women get paid for their work, their work is equal to or even greater in value than men’s work. But some males fail to fathom this fact. They want to be bossy and sometimes this bossy behaviour can come out not only in the form of words but also physical and sexual excesses. This is a pernicious behaviour, which starts with a desire to overpower and ends up with physical and mental exhaustion of women.

For years, few men have supposed the act of beating up their wives as their prerogative. And women, because of family and societal pressure, have to bury the fact and suffer endlessly. This situation has aggravated more during the ‘Government imposed lockdown’ for stopping the spread of Coronavirus. Many men in their frustration of losing jobs, fear of being infected by Coronavirus, inability to go out, have resorted to violence against women. The Hindu group’s report states that, this year, between March 25 and May 31, 1,477 complaints of domestic violence were made by women. This 68-day period recorded more complaints than those received between March and May in the previous 10 years. The fact that is more worrisome and appalling is that 86% of the women who were exposed to some kind of violence never sought for help and to add insult to injury a shocking 77% of the victim did not even mention the incident(s) to anyone.

This problem requires an immediate Redressal. The first and immediate responsibility of such incident, after the perpetrator is of the perpetrator’s family who should immediately stop the person from acting in such manner. Then it is the responsibility of society. To a major extent, we as a society member are responsible for such incidents when we become a mute spectator of such heinous and bestial acts. Instead of acting as a bystander and thinking why should I get involved, one must intervene before it is too late to act. Last but not the least, if a woman’s family gets to know about such unfortunate events, they should not force her to accept the situation and the status quo. Without getting bogged down by the societal pressure, they should act in a manner which is in the best interest of their child.

A woman should always keep one thing in her mind that no one has got any rights under any circumstances to lift their hands on her. And person doing violence is 100% responsible, they must not tolerate it no matter what. Women must also be empowered with the proper training as to what must be their response and how they should tackle such situation. I would like to finish this article with a powerful quote from Maya Angelou which each and every woman must remember that “Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.”