When Equality Forgets Men

Fairness can't be one-sided. As women’s empowerment grows stronger, men in Kashmir are left struggling with silence, stigma, and systems that seldom see their pain.

- Younus M. Bhatt

While scrolling through my phone one evening, I saw a video that stopped me cold. A woman doctor slapped a father who had brought his sick daughter for treatment, then refused to treat the child. I didn’t want to believe it. I checked online, hoping it was fake. It wasn’t.

I kept thinking about that father: standing in a hospital corridor, humiliated and helpless.

If a male doctor had slapped a mother instead, the story would have blown up everywhere. People would have called it assault. There would have been outrage, debates, maybe even a protest.

When a woman does it, though, the reaction changes. It becomes a moment of “anger,” “stress,” or “pressure.” The empathy shifts direction.

That’s where the imbalance begins.

Equality isn’t meant to be selective. Accountability cannot depend on gender. If we truly want justice, it has to apply both ways.

I've watched this imbalance grow silently but steadily in Kashmir. Women’s empowerment has brought enormous change, and that progress must continue. But men’s struggles are slipping out of the conversation.

In homes, courts, offices, and public life, many men feel they’re being judged more than heard.

Family courts reveal this reality in the harshest way. I've spoken to fathers who've spent years fighting to see their children. They enter courtrooms already assumed to be at fault. In many custody cases, the system leans toward the mother, leaving fathers emotionally broken and financially drained.