In temples across India, during Navratri and Diwali, women are worshipped as embodiments of Durga, fierce and invincible, Lakshmi, the bringer of wealth and light or Saraswati, the source of wisdom and creativity. Families place sindoor on their foreheads, offer prayers at their feet, and speak of them as shakti, the divine feminine power. Yet for so many women, this reverence feels like a cruel irony. If they were truly seen as goddesses, why does fear still shadow their every step? Why do daughters grow up learning to lower their eyes, modulate their voices, and shrink their dreams to fit inside someone else’s comfort?
The truth cuts deeper than any festival chant: calling women goddesses is often not worship, it’s control dressed in devotion. It binds them to impossible ideals of purity, sacrifice, and silence, while excusing the violence that surrounds them. In 2023, India recorded 4,48,211 crimes against women, a marginal rise from the previous year, averaging more than 1,200 complaints every single day. Among them were nearly 30,000 rape cases, over 81 every day, most committed by people the victims knew and trusted: relatives, neighbours, acquaintances. These are not distant statistics; they are daughters, sisters, friends whose lives are shattered, whose voices are dismissed, whose pain is buried under layers of shame and “what will people say?”
Imagine a young woman walking home at dusk, heart racing not from excitement but from the constant calculation of risk. Or a wife enduring cruelty in silence because speaking out might mean losing her children, her home, her place in society. This is not divine protection; this is everyday terror. And yet society continues to drape women in the language of divinity while denying them basic safety and dignity.
The Quiet Cruelty of Patriarchy
Patriarchy isn’t always loud shouts or blatant hatred. It is the doctor who brushes off a woman’s pain as “just emotional”. It is the crash-test dummy built on male bodies, leaving women more vulnerable in accidents. It is the medicine dosed for men, causing unexpected side effects in women. It is the classroom where girls are told not to be “too bossy,” while boys are praised for the same ambition.
In India, this system shows its harshest face in the home. Homemakers, the women who rise before dawn to feed families, nurture children, manage endless invisible labour are reduced to just housewives. Their work, exhausting and unending, earns no salary, no respect, no “me-time”. A simple request for rest when ill is met with disbelief: “You stay at home all day, what do you even do?” Financial dependence turns small needs into pleas for permission. And in too many homes, uncles and relatives who should protect become the predators, sexualising every part of a girl’s body from childhood onward.
Seventy-five years after the Constitution promised equality, the gap between law and life remains heartbreaking.
- Equal property rights exist on paper, but daughters are still pressured to “sign it over to your brother” because “you’re going to your husband’s house anyway.”
- Equal pay is the law, yet women earn less for the same work, though recent reports suggest the formal-sector gap has narrowed in some areas, the broader reality for most remains unequal and punishing.
- Child marriage is illegal, but nearly one in four young women (around 23%) still marries before 18, robbing girls of childhood so families can ease financial burdens.
- Sex-selective abortion has been banned since 1994, yet millions of girls remain “missing” before birth, erased because daughters are seen as burdens.
- Education is a right, but girls are the first pulled from school when money is tight; female literacy lags behind male rates, framing a brother’s future as essential and a sister’s as optional.
- Dowry is outlawed, yet over 6,100 women died in dowry-related cases in 2023 alone, more than 16 every day because expectations disguised as “gifts” turn lethal when unmet.
These are not isolated failures. They are the lived reality for millions: a promise written in ink that never reaches the heart of daily life.
When Deflection Becomes Defence
When women speak of these injustices, the response is often swift: “But things have changed.” “Women misuse laws now.” “Men suffer too, what about men’s rights?”
Yes, men face pain, suicide rates higher among men trapped in rigid expectations, mental health stigma. These deserve attention and action. But raising them only when women’s rights are discussed is not solidarity; it is deflection. It shifts focus from centuries of systemic oppression to isolated cases, pretending one push from a long-imprisoned person equals lifelong captivity.
Women in India are raised with fear woven into their upbringing: don’t talk too loudly, don’t wear that, don’t stay out late, don’t trust even family. Their battles are for basic voice and safety. When men become victims, society rallies with hashtags and outrage. When women do, they become mere numbers, statistics that numb rather than awaken.
Equality is not amnesia about history. It begins with acknowledging the weight women have carried, the silences forced upon them, the lives cut short or diminished. Saying “women do it too” does not create balance; it protects the comfort of those who benefit from the imbalance.
What Truly Saves Women
In the end, no pedestal or prayer saves her. What saves her is:
- Education that no one can snatch away, lighting paths even in darkness.
- Her own money, giving her the power to choose, to leave, to rebuild.
- Another woman standing beside her, sister, friend, mother saying, “I see you, I believe you.”
- Her anger, finally refusing to stay quiet.
- Her voice, no longer asking permission to exist.
- Her daughter, who watches and vows never to let the world silence her mother the way it tried to silence so many before.
This Women’s Day and every day, let us stop the hollow worship. Let us stop calling women goddesses to keep them bound. Let us instead see them as human, flawed, fierce, deserving of safety, respect, and freedom without apology. Because the real divine power was never in the myths placed upon women. It has always been in their refusal to stay broken, in their courage to rise again, and in their unyielding demand for a world that finally matches its promises.
If this piece touched you, if you’ve felt the same ache or fire in your chest, come read more of my raw, relatable stories at my profile on Her Campus at MUJ, let’s keep speaking the truths we were never supposed to say out loud.