One individual’s courage can inspire real change

By opening up on sexual abuse, women are challenging powerful men today

Resilience in the face of adversity is perhaps an omnibus description of what women across the world have to face, given the different challenges they encounter. For Dr Rola Hallam, working in a devastated Syria, her homeland, actor Rose McGowan and Farah Mohammed, who heads the Malala fund on giving girls the right to education, speaking on this theme at the just-concluded Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, the situations they faced were different, but the underlying story was how they had to pick themselves up and try and make a change both to their own environments and the world. Readers here will have heard most of McGowan whose incendiary disclosure on sexual violence started a chain of events which took down powerful Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, opening up an ugly can of worms on abuse at the hands of influential men. Her courage in coming out and sharing her experiences seem to have given other women the nerve to speak up. Media legends such as Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin and Garrison Keillor have lost their jobs, ripping aside the veil of silence on sexual abuse.

This behaviour continued for decades because they thought they would get away with it because of their position and power. McGowan was absolutely right when she decried societies which asked girls to be careful while going to school but did not tell their boys not to rape. Today, through the #MeToo movement, the whole issue has taken on a life of its own with women from all fields coming out to name and shame their attackers. This has definitely been a chastening experience for many men for whom silence worked as the best co-conspirator.