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Shah Rukh Khan: "A girl
should be seen, not heard."

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"Be quiet," or, "chup."

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These words are often used
to silence girls right from childhood,

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well into adulthood

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and deep into old age.

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I'm proud to introduce our next speaker,
a true champion of the female voice,

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an advisor on poverty,

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gender and development for the World Bank,

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United Nations and several NGOs
in India and the world over.

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She calls herself a cultural detective.

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Let's raise our voices to welcome
renowned social scientist and author

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Deepa Narayan.

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(Music)

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(Applause)

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Deepa Narayan: The goal
of every loving parent

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is to raise good girls,

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but what parents actually do

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is to constrain, confine
and crush their girls.

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So as they crush their girls,

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they prepare them for abuse.

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This would be so devastating

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that no parent would be able to bear it,

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so it's disguised.

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In India, we call this "adjusting."

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I'm sure you've heard the word.

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"Darling, just adjust a bit.

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Just adjust.

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No matter what happens, just adjust."

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"Adjust" trains girls to be powerless,

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not to exist, not to be seen,

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not to have a self,

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and it trains boys to claim power
and authority over the world.

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And in the meantime we keep talking about
gender equality and women's empowerment.

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After 2012, after the gang rape
in a moving bus in Delhi,

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I really wanted to understand
the roots of abuse.

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So I started asking
a very simple question:

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what does it mean to you
to be a good woman or a good man today?

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And I was so surprised by what I heard,

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the answers particularly
that young people gave,

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that the project became a research project
and it took over my life.

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For three years, I listened
to over 600 women, men and children,

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educated, middle class,

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and it led to 1,800 hours of listening

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and 8,000 pages of notes,

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and it took another year
to make sense of it.

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Nowadays, we see well-dressed, educated
women like many of you in this room,

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all of you in this room, and myself,

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and we think the world has changed,

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but these external changes
are extremely misleading,

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because on the inside,
we have not changed.

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So today, I'm not going
to talk about poor people.

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I'm going to talk only about
the middle and upper classes,

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because we are the ones most in denial.

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We are the ones who have said
over and over again

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that when women are educated,

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when they're employed

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and they earn incomes,

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they will be equal, empowered and free.

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They're not.

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Why?

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From my research, I identify seven habits

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that delete women,

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that make women disappear,

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but these habits persist

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because they're so familiar to us

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and we've made them good and moral.

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Why would you change or drop
anything that's good and moral?

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So, on the one hand, we love our children,

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we love our daughters,

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and on the other hand, we crush them.

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Habit one: You don't have a body.

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The first step to make a girl a ghost
is to make her body disappear,

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to pretend that she doesn't have a body.

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Akangsha, who is 23, said,

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"In my family, we never
spoke about the body, never."

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And it is in this silence

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that millions and millions of girls
get sexually molested,

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and they don't even tell their mothers.

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And it's the negative comments from others

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that leads to 90 percent of women
saying that they dislike their bodies.

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When a girl rejects her body,

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she rejects her only house

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and invisibility and insecurity

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become her very shaky foundation.

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Habit two: Be quiet. Chup.

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If you're not supposed to exist

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and you don't have a body,

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how can you have a voice?

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So just about every woman said,

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"When I was little,
my mother used to scold me and say,

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'Don't speak, be quiet, be chup,

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speak softly, don't argue
and never answer back.

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Jawab nahi Dena.'"

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I'm sure you've all heard that.

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And so girls become afraid,
and they withdraw.

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And they become quiet and they say,

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"Let it go. Jaane do.

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What's the point? Nobody listens."

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Educated women said

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that their number one problem

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was their inability to speak up,

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as if there was a foot on their throat

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ready to choke them.

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Silence slices off women.

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Habit three: Be a people pleaser.

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Please others.

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Everyone likes a nice woman
who always smiles,

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who never says no, who is never angry,

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even when she's being exploited.

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Amisha, who is 18, said,

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"My father said,

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'If I don't see you smiling,
I don't feel good.'"

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So she smiles.

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So her father is teaching her,

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my happiness is more important
than your happiness.

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And in this business of trying
to make everyone happy all the time,

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girls become afraid to make decisions.

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And when you ask them, they say,

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"Anything, whatever! Kuch bhi!

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Everything goes. Chalta hai."

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Darsha, who is 25,

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said with great pride,

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"I'm highly elastic.

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I become whatever others want me to be."

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Such girls give up their dreams,

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their desires,

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and nobody even notices,

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except for depression.

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It moves in.

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Another slice of a girl is taken off.

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Habit four: You have no sexuality.

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I think you'd all agree that
with a population of over 1.3 billion,

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sex is not new to India.

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What is new is that
more people now acknowledge

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that women, too,
have a right to sexual desire.

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But how can a woman who has not
been allowed to own her body,

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who hasn't been educated about her body,

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who may have been sexually molested,

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who cannot say no

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and who has been filled with shame,

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how can she claim her sexual desire?

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A woman's sexuality is suppressed.

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Habit five: Don't trust women.

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Imagine how the world would change

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if women came together in solidarity,

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but as to make sure
that this doesn't happen,

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our culture places high moral value

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on loyalty to men and family secrecy.

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Woman after woman said,

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"I know only one trustworthy woman,

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and that's me."

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Even Ruchi, who is 30

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and who works on women's empowerment
at Delhi University, said,

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"I don't trust women.
They're jealous and they backbite."

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Obviously, then, in cities,

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women don't join women's groups,

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and when you ask them why, they say,
"We don't have time for gossip."

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It's much easier 
to demolish a woman who is alone.

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Habit six: Duty over desire.

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Muskan gave a very long definition
of a good girl, and she's only 15.

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"She is kind, gentle, polite, loving,

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caring, truthful, obedient,
respects elders,

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helps everyone unconditionally,
and is good to others and fulfills duty."

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Tiring, isn't it.

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By the time you fulfill duty,

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whatever little desire
is left is also lost.

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And when sacrificing mothers
have nothing left to say

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except talk about food --

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"Have you eaten? Khana kha liya?
What will you eat?" --

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men like Saurabh, who is 24,
call them "boring."

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A woman becomes a residue.

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Habit seven: Be totally dependent.

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So all these habits
collectively crush women,

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fill her with fear

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and make her totally dependent
on men for her survival,

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and this allows the system
of male power to continue.

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So all these seven habits
that we thought were good and moral

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snatch life away from girls

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and position men to abuse.

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We must change.

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How do we change?

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A habit is just a habit.

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Every habit is a learned habit,

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so we can unlearn them

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and this personal change
is extremely important.

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I had to change too.

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But this doesn't change the system

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that crushes millions of other women.

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So we have to go to the roots.

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We must change what it means
to be a good woman and a good man,

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because this a foundation
of every society.

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We don't need elastic women,
we need elastic definitions,

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for men too,

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and this big societal change
cannot happen without men's involvement.

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We need you.

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We need men to become champions of change,

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to develop strong change muscles.

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Otherwise, it will be two more centuries

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before our girls, and our boys,

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are safe and free.

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Imagine half a billion women
coming together, with the support of men,

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to talk to one another
for conversation, for change,

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both personal and political,

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and imagine men in their own circles,

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and imagine women and men coming together
to just listen to each other

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without judgment, without blame,

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without accusations and without shame.

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Imagine how much we would change.

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We can do this together.

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Women, don't adjust.

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Men, adjust.

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It's time.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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SRK: How well said, how wonderful.

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Everyone, Deepa, please.

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Listening to her, I realized

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that even in the simplest conversations
that we have with women,

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we're actually being aggressive.

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For example, I do tell
my daughter sometimes,

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"Yaar Tu hasti hai to mujhe
accha lagta hai varna bura lagta hai".

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So sorry, I would never do that.

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Aaj Se main meri beti ko yahi bolunga.

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Whatever you're doing,

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mujhe accha hi lagta hai,
aur accha nahi bhi lagta hai

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Toh mera kya, tum wohi karo jo
tumhare ko lagta hai, right?

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(Applause)

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How did you feel,

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first listening to so many
unfulfilled stories, desires,

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lack of independence,

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of girls that you normally would assume
we think these girls are better off?

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DN: Very depressed.

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It was shocking for me,
and that's why I couldn't stop,

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because I had no plans to do a study
and no plans to write a book.

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I'd written 17 books before,
and I thought, "I'm done,"

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but when I went to St. Stephen's College

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and I heard, at most elite colleges
you well know from Delhi,

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and the young women and the men,

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what they said about what it meant
to them to be a woman and man

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sounded not like me
but like my mother's generation.

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So then I went to another college
and another college.

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The thing that was striking to me

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is that each woman felt she was alone,

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that she hides her fear
and hides her behavior,

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because she thinks it's a personal fault.

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It's not a personal fault, it's training,

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and I think that's the biggest revelation

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is that, if we stop pretending,

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then the world changes.

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SRK: Do you girls all agree
with what Deepa is saying?

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(Applause)

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Already see that young girl saying,

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"Heard, heard what she said?
You say this to me."

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Yeah, that's the way it should be.

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You, boy, you adjust.
We are not adjusting anymore, OK?

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(Applause)

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Thank you so much.
Have a good evening. Thank you.

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(Applause)