What women empowerment actually means?

Words like Women empowerment, She the boss and Feminism... is on top of the media industry these days. Either it be print media or visual every body, i mean every body including political leaders, CEOs, film stars are talking about it. Stories of women making a mark in business or individual professions are floating every where. Which is indeed very good.

On contrary, Monica who came from small village of Bihar to Pune alone, with a dream to earn and fund her family, her 3 brothers and an old mother with at least three times meal per day had to run away back to Bihar today. The reason behind was her maternal brother who brought her to Pune to work, tried to rape her last night.

An other story Radhika(Name changed) who came from a reputed family from Kolkata, a B.E. M.B.A girl, working in a reputed multinational company. She was stalked by a nariayal pani wala from several days. She had to take a not so crowded road to reach her PG every day. That day she was late from her office. This stalker tried to pull her with an objective of rape, but when he cud`t (because he heard somebody coming), he slit her throat with a sharp object.

While we are on a spree to chase our dreams, with lots of wishes in our heart, we forget to ask ourselves are we ready? We are still afraid to go out for meetings at night, we still doubt a persons intentions if we are called to their offices. We hesitate to go alone. Work place discrimination, domestic violence and harassment we are all aware about.

The question still retains ARE WE READY? Even sometimes we donot even accept that we can be a target. But in 90 percent cases of rapes and molestation, women who least expected any thing to happen, by least expected person were targeted and molested by the same person.

"KBK-Raksha" a brain child of Dr Komal Bansal, was started with an objective to educate and create awareness in each and every women, girl and child against sexual abuse. Komal says " The scars of physical abuse are never gone from memories, it always pulls you back. It spoils relations, trust and confidence. 99.9 percent women experience something in their life time, but not our kids will".

We as a team KBK-Raksha, decided to make women think and believe that any body can be a target. We need to be prepared and take precautionary measures to stay protected ourselves, no more blame game needed now.

It was in year 2017 8th March, women`s day when we started taking self defence sessions (not martial arts) for women in corporates. Mitsubishi Electric as our first client we till date have conducted sessions in more than 70 companies, several colleges and schools in Pune and outside Pune. Still the number is going on with more than 10,000 women being addressed till date.

We teach women about conquering their fear at the time of distress and maintain peace of mind to work on an escape plan, how to use simple things like pins or pens as weapons to defend. human anatomy for right hit at right time and understanding the intentions for then and their confrontation are special covered topics in our sessions. Distress drills and live scenarios to make women feel and prepare themselves for distress situations are also created. Grappling sessions, to remove their hesitation while defending themselves, are also demonstrated and practiced. Also topics like educating your child about sexual abuse are covered at some places.

Dr Komal Bansal Says " Self defence is an art of survival in the world outside the immune area. When we teach our kids to stay protected from fire, on roads from vehicles or even weather, then why not from sexual abuse. Prepare them, make them learn and see their confidence. They will be undefeated not only personally but professionally also. Once we empower them on this, we will automatically see more women success stories, and the persona they will achieve will be more fearless and more go getter."