Women need the internet and the internet needs women

Who was your first teacher? First friend? First Supporter? First Career Coach? For me, this was all my grandmother. My mother was a working accounts professional and an expert at that, so my growing up years were dominated by the pleasant and very informative interactions I had with my grandmother. She was a political activist, a working professional in her heyday and brought up her 4 kids and her late sister's 3 kids without even breaking a sweat. And then there were us, the 15 grandkids. She always had a unique perspective about everything. I often wonder, what if she had social media and access to the internet back then?

It would have made our childhoods even more richer, imagine my grandmother narrating tales of Asgard and Valhalla to me! Imagine her cracking the complex differential and integral math problems I had to break my head with! Before this becomes an infinite journey into my past, let me get straight to the point. How do you measure the success or failure of a society? Very simply by looking at how the women are leading their lives and also by seeing if they have full liberty to be and do whatever they want. When a society gets there, it can truly call itself a success. We are a bit of a distance away from there. The fastest way that we can get there is to accelerate the access that women have to various sources of information and support systems that can actually aid them in getting to their rightful place.

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And in the recent times, there is one answer to this, the internet! There is absolutely nothing that you can't learn from the internet and after that, it's just a matter of careful application and implementation. Is the internet a perfect place without dangers lurking? Obviously not! It is the largest experiment in anarchy and hence for every good, there is a bad on the internet. But should that stop or hinder women from going online, not at all! Much like offline life, online life needs right tools and measures to safeguard oneself while not hindering progress.

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Every online platform worth it's salt has tools and measures built in to it that helps women or anyone feel safer and to call out abusive or violent aberrations that happen. The need of the hour is to get women aware of what these are and how to use them. Like anything, it will take a bit of learning and a bit of time. But then in the end, if it will get millions of creative, strong, wonderful and knowledgeable women like my grandmother online and connect them, it is all worth it. Believe me when I say this, women network with ease naturally, they help people instinctively. So by definition - The wonderful women of our nation need the internet and more importantly, the internet needs them, a lot!

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