English Audio Request

The idea of progress.
For a society or for manking mor generally, progress means evolution, improvement, going towards more knowledge and more happiness. The notion of progress is a modern idea that fight stability in order to go ahead, to increase and be better.
How can progress change the world? Must it? Is progress available to all?
I am going to talk about this notion mainly through the example of India, the second largest country in the world in terms of population. It is part of a group of countries that is called BRICS (it’s in fact all the emerging countries). The three main cities in India are New Delhi, the capital city, Mumbai and Kolkata. Although the country is developing, a huge number of people live in slums and are confronted to diseases because of poverty and lack of hygiene.
In India, cultural traditions are still very present and the idea of progress and modernity is more visible in the infrastructures. The photograph entitled ‘India on the move’ shows that big cities like Mumbai have a very modern city center, with very modern buildings. It also shows a large group of people on a beach that is in fact a religious place, they are celebrated their gods and beliefs. There is a very strong link between past traditions and every present modernity.
The traditions of the country consider the husband as the head of the family, which may cause prejudice against the wife, and women more generally. This is part of the reasons why many couples choose abortion when they know they’re expecting a baby girl.
The text entitled ‘an other girl’ illustrates this gendercide. The story tells of the birth of a baby girl. For Jasu, the father, this birth is viewed as a terrible burden. Jasu knows that a girl will not help him to work in the fields, and when she grows up he will have to pay a dowry when she gets married. As he thinks he won’t have enough money to pay, he thinks the best thing is to get rid of the baby girl. Kavita on the other hands wants to keep her child. Her instinct to protect her is stronger than anything else. Unfortunately, women in traditional India have no real say in decisions, they have to obey their husband. In the text Jasu makes the decision not to keep the baby in spite of his wife’s wishes.
One terrible consequence of gendercide in India is that there are now fewer women than men. Many men don’t find wives, there are a lot of kidnappings of women, a lot of rapes too. The Indian society has become very violent against women. Today however, women are fighting against this violence and against the inequalities between men and women. Associations such as Pink Saris (created by Sampat Pal Devi)have been set up to help women defend themselves (teaching them self defense)
These women who fight for equal rights today remind me of the suffragettes who fought to get the right to vote in Britain in the last century. In the film that we saw (entitled Suffragette), the main character is Maud Watts, a young mother who works at a laundry. She started working there at a very young age and is victim of sexual harassment. As the movement for the vote becomes more important, she gets more and more involved. She becomes more radical after her child is taken away from her. This very hard fight for equality was won in 1928, when women and men over 21 could vote. In other countries women were allowed to vote much later: 1944 in France, and only last year in Saudi Arabia.
To conclude, I think women’s determination made progress possible, yet total equality is still not a reality. In most countries there is still a pay gap: women are paid less than men even if they do the same job. There is still room for progress and improvement.