Ain't I a woman?

Photo Courtesy aloshbennett
Women are a harassed lot in most societies and more so if they are economically weak. While the women in educated and moneyed classes often get a lot of respect, those who are poor and illiterate get the short end of the stick. In India, where manual labor is given very little importance and poverty is rampant, women of the poorer sections are treated unfairly on a regular basis.

Are the poor women suffering from malnutrition but still working hard to give their family hot food, not to be respected? Why is it that women from so called upper classes are quickly given seats in trains and buses, but their poorer counterparts left standing?

The very strange attitudinal problem that many seem to be suffering from could be very well solved by this stirring piece:

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883), Women's Convention, Akron Ohio, 1851