Impact of gender discrimination on a Woman’s Mental Health
Like everyone else, a woman goes through different phases of her life. First she is a toddler, then she becomes an infant, a child, a teenager, then a girl, a maiden, then a woman and a middle aged woman, later on a senior citizen and so on. Everything changes with her age. The only thing that does not change is the behavior of the society towards her. It begins discriminating against her the day she is born and does not stop till she exits the world. This is a widely knows truth and this gender discrimination has a huge and ever-lasting impact on a woman’s health.
It begins when a girl is young enough to not even understand family relations, but she understands why her father simply does not sing her to sleep because he never wanted a girl child. Not being loved is something we all fear. A girl even in her school days has to face a lot of gender discrimination and hold herself together. Bullying and ragging have not recently been heard of as they have been happening in schools and colleges for ages now. Being ragged or bullied based on gender discrimination especially breaks a teenager down to great extents. It results into depression, anxiety, etc. As we already know, a large number of girls suffer from mental illnesses in their teenage years as compared to boys.
Confidence or self confidence plays a major role in a human being’s life. Women especially require confidence in order to survive in this misogynistic world. Although, the society remains being so cruel to women, that this confidence shatters not only the woman, but also her self-respect and self-esteem. This can cost her not only her career, but her entire life. In later years when a woman is a mother to two and is still being treated the same way she was treated when she was young, she faces serious mental issues and disbelief in self. She has no sense of respect for herself and just accepts that she will never be respected by the society until finally one day she is no more.
We, as the human race have evolved into humans from apes but our society still requires to go a long way. We must now break stereotypes and give women the respect and status they deserve. We must now become ‘human’ not only physically, but also mentally.
A woman myself,
Shubhangini Shaktawat