Social Taboos as Barriers to Women Empowerment: An Analytical Study

Abstract

Mr. Abdul Jubbar Abstract: Women’s empowerment has been a key point which has fascinated the critics and scholars alike, since the sixties of the last century. Studies like gender discrimination, women writings, women empowerment and female identity have occupied the centre stage of deliberation. Women are often described as better half of men. A society ravaged with inequalities between males and females cannot ensure prosperity for adequate decent living. The question of “how” and “Why” are women in bondage, debated by scholars. This is in turn has raised the next question from whom the women need liberation. The real truth is that women are discriminated just because they are “women”. Down the centuries women have been subjected to certain social taboos which have been the handiwork of the patriarchally structured social mechanism like India. The very formation of the idea of gender is a social formation whereas sex is a natural division. The society has devised certain mechanism in the form of taboos to deprive the women of her access to the dominant domains of society and therefore put them subservient to men. These questions have great social relevance and needs immediate attention. This paper is an attempt to highlight those issues and factors which impede women’s empowerment. Efforts have also been made here to analyze the taboos which have pushed the women to the social periphery and suggestions offered thereof to ameliorate their position for the betterment of the s...