Girl Up Neev

Every now and then, we come across the instances of women being a part of abusive relationships. Factors like financial dependence on the abuser, hesitation and fear to leave, lack of self- esteem, love for the children, etc stops a woman from severing the ties with the abuser and one of the outcomes of this predicament is Battered Woman Syndrome. Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) has been created as a psychological tool for understanding the mental condition of battered women who kill their batterers. It is basically a pattern of symptoms and signs displayed by a woman who has been a subject to persistent suffering, psychological, sexual or physical, owing to intimate partner violence by the male partner. It is sometimes also referred to as battered wife syndrome. Mainly, there are four stages through which the women who develop this condition generally go through. These include: denial about the fact that she has been subjected to abuse; guilty feeling that she is the culprit of the ab...

“ Cinema is a weapon. For the reason, it must be fought for.”  -Augusto Boal Cinema has not only been a source of entertainment but also a gateway to the future, a means to understand the past and a mirror reflecting our present. It is a unique weapon which has helped the humankind to get past great wars. But today, rather than being a weapon of choice, it has instead become a means of war. Despite movies being the largest source of entertainment in India, there is a single commonality in every movie released - female characters are mere an accessory in the plot rather than being an integral part of the story. Earlier, mythological stories such used to be a tool of inspiration for writers and hence male and female characters were presented as the same. This is not the situation today and writers need to move on from misogynistic male and helpless female representation. Another reason is the lack of female writers in the industry which leads to portrayal of female characters from ma...