Self-Esteem is above all!!

Today it just happened to be one of the few days when I actually sat down to go through the newspaper I have subscribed. I glanced through the normal routine stuff, nothing new as such; then sifted to the magazine. That was also more of an advertisement journal than a newspaper.

In the midst of these advertisements, they somehow tried to squeeze in one interview of an Indian lady in UK who had won a case against its MNC alleging sexual discrimination.

Well for the starters, Sexual discrimination in layman’s terms is when a person is treated less favorably than a person of the opposite sex would be treated in the same or similar circumstances.

Here in this case, the employee had found out that she was getting paid way less than the male peers at her own position.

Well, even though how unethical the practice may be, we have several instances of such cases which are going on behind the corporate doors and out of those several instances there would be very rare cases like this, where an individual would have really tried to bell the cat.

And mind you, though these kind of cases are mostly related with females only, there is no dearth of scenarios where the fairer skin has also taken benefit of the loopholes in the system.

So one thing is sure here that this is not gender specific; it is always individual specific. The only thing is that for a woman to go out and talk about the issues in public and repercussions of that action are more uncalled for. On that count, I found the stand taken by this particular lady in question a brave effort.

Brave I would say because there are a number of people who are ready to fight for others but very few have the courage to stand for their own rights.  They are ready to take that tag of selfish. They are ready to face the bullets targeted at them by their own family sometimes, society and obviously unwanted media attention.

Lot of people would take the first step but would go back in that darkness again after seeing the uproar their action has created. It takes a person with high self-esteem to stand for what he or she deserves.

Nobody but a person can only decide the way he or she wants to be treated. A millions of us out there are ready to swallow our self-esteem quite a couple of times just for the sake of bread and butter of the family but there are few warriors for whom their self-esteem is more important than bread and butter. And I am sure they would have also taken their share of shit before taking any extreme action. What matters most is the perseverance after that initial period.

The lady fought her case for five long years, not working anywhere in between as she knew what would happen. Only thing that kept her going was self-belief. She knew she was right and there ends the matter.

Like this there are a number of heroes in our lives roaming around us fighting their own battle. Some may win. Some would lose. Nothing is in one’s hands. 

Only thing that is in our hands is our moral duty towards us and others. If we can do that one particular thing with utmost honesty, I don’t think we would have any such cases hurting the back bone of the society, i.e. the relationship between a man and a woman, in whatever form it may be.