Imagine being born with wings, only to spend your life asking how far you are allowed to fly.
Imagine loving the night, finding peace in quiet streets and beauty in a city after dark, yet knowing that you must return home by 7:30 or 8 p.m. Not always because your parents have told you so, but because somewhere inside, you have learned that, as a woman, you must know your limits.
The clock becomes a reminder, not of time, but of the invisible boundaries placed around your freedom. A child is born like a bird, eager to explore the sky, but somewhere along the way, she learns that even the sky has restrictions. Sometimes, she may even wonder whether her only mistake was being born a girl.
Society tells women to touch the sky, chase their dreams, and become independent. Yet it often expects them to lower their voices, walk carefully, dress appropriately, and return home before darkness falls. From childhood, many girls hear familiar instructions: “Don’t shout,” “Behave properly,” “Speak softly,” and “Be a good girl.”
Slowly, silence becomes a habit, and obedience becomes a quality people admire. A girl who never questions anything is often considered well-mannered, while one who speaks up for herself may be labelled disrespectful. Even traditions that appear harmless can become expectations that women are not allowed to question.
In the twenty-first century, we encourage women to reach for the stars, yet we still struggle to accept their simplest desire: to live freely without constantly worrying about how society will judge them. For many girls, one of their biggest dreams is not to travel the world or conquer the sky; it is simply to walk down their own street and return home without fear. Is that really too much to ask?
The restrictions placed on women are not limited to their homes or the hours they are allowed to stay outside. They follow women into classrooms, public transport, workplaces, streets, and even the digital world. A woman may experience harassment and then find herself questioned more harshly than the person responsible. “Why was she there?” “Why was she alone?” “What was she wearing?”
These questions shift the blame from the person responsible to the woman who experienced the harm. According to the World Health Organization, approximately one in three women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence during her lifetime. Behind such statistics are real women who have been frightened, hurt, ignored, or made to feel that speaking up will only make their lives more difficult. Some remain silent because they fear being blamed, disbelieved, mocked, or punished for telling the truth.
This culture of silence does not end when a woman gets married. I believe some marriages endure not simply because of love, but because of the adjustments women are expected to make and the silence they are expected to maintain. It may sound uncomfortable, but we need to ask ourselves an honest question: How many women are truly happy, and how many have simply learned to tolerate what makes them unhappy?
After marriage, a woman may face physical, emotional, or psychological abuse and still be told to adjust—for the children, for the family’s reputation, or to keep the marriage alive. She may be reminded that every relationship requires compromise, as though compromise means accepting disrespect or sacrificing her dignity.
But adjustment should never mean losing yourself. Love should never require someone to endure abuse, and marriage should never become a place where one person has to suffer quietly to protect the image of a happy family. Our society often praises a woman for saving her marriage but rarely asks what it cost her to save it. A marriage should be held together by love, trust, and mutual respect, not by one person’s ability to remain silent.
Perhaps the most painful part of patriarchy is that its lessons are sometimes passed from one generation of women to another. A mother may tell her daughter to adjust, stay quiet, avoid arguments, and tolerate certain things after marriage. Often, she does not say these things because she wants her daughter to suffer. She may genuinely believe she is preparing her for the world because those are the same lessons she was taught.
Our mothers may have worked hard to secure our future, saved money for our education, and dreamed of giving us a better life. Yet sometimes, the future they imagine for us focuses more on marriage than on our security, independence, and ability to stand on our own.
Why does society expect a girl to be calm and agreeable but hesitate when she raises her voice for her rights? Why is knowing how to cook sometimes valued more than knowing how to defend her choices? A girl who can speak for herself is not a difficult girl; she is a girl who understands that her opinions matter.
When we talk about a woman’s choices, we must also talk about motherhood. Becoming a mother can be a beautiful experience, but should every woman be expected to become one? Society often struggles to accept a woman who does not want children, even though it is her body, her life, and her decision. Some women may not wish to experience pregnancy or childbirth, while others may simply imagine a different future for themselves. Neither choice should make them less worthy of respect.
Even for women who choose motherhood, the expectations are enormous. Maternity leave exists, but is the time provided always enough to recover physically, adjust emotionally, and care for a newborn? When women return to work, many are still expected to manage the household, care for their children, support their husbands, and meet everyone’s expectations without complaint.
We often compare women to Maa Durga, imagining them with ten hands capable of doing everything at once. But have we ever stopped to ask whether the woman behind those ten hands is tired?
According to UN Women, women globally spend significantly more time than men on unpaid care and domestic work—work that is essential to families and society, yet often goes unrecognised. We celebrate women’s strength so much that we sometimes forget they should not have to be strong every moment of their lives.
A woman is not born to be a daughter who always obeys, a wife who endlessly adjusts, or a mother who sacrifices every part of herself. She is a human being before she is any of these roles.
So, what does freedom actually mean for a woman? Does it mean being allowed to do everything a man does, or does it mean being able to make her own choices without having to justify every one of them?
Freedom means being able to choose what to wear without being blamed for someone else’s behaviour. It means being able to travel, study, work, marry, or remain unmarried without being treated as though her life belongs to society. It means choosing motherhood without pressure, expressing an opinion without fear, and leaving a harmful situation without being told that she should have adjusted a little more.
It does not mean that women are superior to men; it means that women are not inferior to them.
Patriarchy does not always arrive as an obvious command. Sometimes, it arrives disguised as advice, tradition, protection, or concern. It may sound like “I’m only saying this for your own good” or “This is how things have always been.” Because these rules are repeated so often, we may stop recognising them as restrictions at all.
But just because something has existed for generations does not mean it is fair.
Change begins when we question the lessons we have inherited, teach our sons to respect boundaries and our daughters that they are allowed to establish them, and stop confusing silence with goodness and sacrifice with a woman’s worth.
We must learn to raise girls who know how to speak, not merely how to stay quiet; girls who understand that their safety is a right, not a reward for behaving perfectly. We must also allow women to rest, change their minds, make mistakes, and live beyond the roles society has written for them.
A girl should not have to learn silence before she learns confidence. A woman should not have to endure suffering to prove her strength. And no woman should have to spend her life asking permission to live it.
Perhaps the real victory is not when a woman finally learns how to survive within society’s invisible rules, but when she becomes free enough to question them, break them, and write her own.