It’s scary to be a woman in India: Soha Ali Khan

Actor Soha Ali Khan is concerned about women’s safety in the city. Soha says that she always considered Mumbai to be extremely safe for women living alone in the city, but was in for a rude shock when, one night, she woke up to see a burglar in her bedroom.

“It was scary, to say the least,” she shudders. “A woman has to know how to protect herself. If such an incident can happen in Mumbai, which is far more liberal than other states, I can only imagine what happens elsewhere,” says Soha. The actor says that women’s safety apart, the other two causes that the Stayfree DNA I Can Women’s Half Marathon initiative supports — namely awareness about cervical cancer and girl child’s education are also close to her heart.

 “Look closely and you will realize that they are all inter-related. My parents never differentiated between my brother and me when it came to educating us. In fact, I was the one to do my masters so I don’t understand the reason for gender segregation. It’s about time that people realise this too,” says Soha.

The actor voices her concern against the dangers in store for women in the country and cites female foeticide and infanticide as the root of all problems. “It’s scary to be a woman in India. Things are changing but at a snail’s pace. It’s only when a woman is educated that she can fight such evils and pass on the knowledge to her children as well,” points out Soha. Education, she asserts, helps build a woman’s confidence and enhances her ability to survive and protect herself from dangers lurking around. Cervical cancer too, she says, can be easily eradicated, “but women have to be educated to know that all it takes is a vaccine to be safe from such a deadly condition. Cervical cancer is dreaded by all women but very few know that there are vaccines available for it. This is why I feel that education, women’s safety and cervical cancer are all issues that are related to one another. And the right way to go about it is by educating the girl child, the rest will just fall in place,” says Soha.
 

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