Recently I read in the newspapers that Dharmendra and Hemamalini's daughter said, very proudly, that her father considered her his true son. And she is not the only one. I often hear fond fathers patting their  daughters' backs and saying “Aa mari dikri nahi dikro chhe”.

I have also seen on dozens of occasions cowardly men  presented with bangles and asked “Are you a woman?” Or “Kya choodiya pahenke rakhi hai ?”

For me these are but two instances of the deep seated disdain and disrespect we have for women in this country – and by we I unfortunately mean both men and women.

Let us first start with the Esha Deol statement. Does she identify with her father and disdain her mother? Does she think that her mother, who is obviously someone's daughter and not someone's son, is useless/weak/disrespect- worthy/ a burden or worse? Did her mother bring her up to think men were superior? Was she unable to instill the joy of being a woman in Esha? Or does she herself feel inferior? Where does the daughter get this attitude from, that requires her to negate her woman-ness and base her self worth on being equated with a son?

And in the case of presenting choodis as an insult to a man: how does wearing a bangle become an image of cowardliness ? Sikh warriors (and even normal Sikh men) wear them. As do Rajput warriors. As does Kali during her dance of destruction to liberate the world. And Gujarati literature and folklore are replete with heroic women who use their hefty kadas to protect themselves by bashing them on a potential rapist or enemy's  head.

Mena, of Mena Gurjari fame tells the king who is amorous of her “With this spiked bangle I can break open your head like a coconut, so stay away from me”. Would one consider any of these cowards or cowardly acts?

Women reducing women. A recurring and tragic theme. A theme of a patriarchy's successful “divide and rule” strategy. Get women to demean other women through language,  family ties, power structures – and the playing field is clear for the men to shine.

“How”, you may ask. Why blame patriarchy for women's natural jealousy and insecurity?

Let us look at a typical family scenario. A daughter is born. From her first breath she hears, sees, senses the negativity around her birth. As she grows up she hears the innuendos, or worse the unveiled aggression from the family. She is told she is no good. That she is a burden and a dowry will have to found to marry her off. That she was a mistake. She sees her brother being coddled. Given better food. Allowed to study when guests arrive and she is expected to make the tea. Made to feel unimportant when her brother goes to an English medium or a private school. She is told that her real home is her husband's home. So she lives on the dream, fed in no small part by the romances on screen in every movie she sees, that one day SRK, Small B, Saif, Aamir will come and romance her away and she will live in song and dance for ever after. Then the rude shock of an arranged marriage and a life with a mother in law who sees her as a thief stealing her son. So her dreams are shattered. She wants ONE person to love, to cuddle, to call her own – a son. A daughter won't do because she will have to be given away. So a SON. A son arrives, grows up bathed in love, cuddled, made to feel a hero. And then his wife, brought up similarly to his mother, arrives. And our girl A, now a mother in law restarts the cycle of abuse as the new wife becomes a potential threat to the one love of her life, her son.

There are many such self fulfilling behavioural prophesies that we fall prey to. Ones which make us see ourselves as useless, that make us feel weak, that make us play into the hands of those who use women.

There are no external solutions to break these cycles that lead to women bashing and women hating in our society. We can only break them by realizing that they exist; and by deciding not to be pawns in them ourselves, through our own behaviour and attitudes. Its not easy, but it urgently needs to be done. Otherwise no amount of lip service or loud hoardings to save the girl child will ever yield results.