TV: Empowerment box or Stupid box?

According to Joel Waldfogel, watching TV is good because it helps to empower the women living in rural areas. A lot of people would disagree with Waldfogel and hence, give names like the "idiot box" to TV as they think that watching TV only encourages the people to become lazier. However, after reading the article Waldfogel wrote and witnessing the change in women, I can't help but agree with him.

Rural places of India and other third world countries like Nepal, where I come from, are very gender bias. Women are dominated, discriminated and publicly humiliated, and they have no say in this. One of the reasons why the women are so quite about all those physical and emotion harassments could be because they do not know that it is wrong. According to the survey done by Robert Jensen and Emily Oyster, a lot of women think that it is necessary to ask their husbands' permission before doing anything and that they deserve to get beaten by their spouse.

We can't run away from the bitter truth that stereotypes who think that women are made only to cook, clean and have sex still exist, but the least that we can do is educate women and aware them of their rights. The problem here is that a majority of women in rural areas aren't educated and there aren't enough adult literacy programs being organized. So, this is where the "idiot box" comes handy. House wives are known for watching a lot of family dramas on TV and those dramas are actually educational, for they show how women are independent. Those TV shows portray women as independent workers who take charge of their lives and choices. Watching those characters have a say about their lives and do things the way they want to inspires a majority of women in the rural areas. Eventually they apply those in their lives and therefore gain more independence from the society. According to this article, a certain study stated that there was a vast improvement among the women who started watching TV shows with women empowerment.

I remember my helper telling me that women in the village she came from were scared and dominated by the men 8 years ago. However, now that they have TV shows to entertain and educate them, they have started getting a grip over their lives. According to her, the women in her village dress differently, talk more boldly and make decisions more frequently. She believes that watching female dominant shows brought this change in them. In fact her sister, who lives in one of the villages in Nepal, threatened to sue her husband if he didn't treat her and their daughter right. Surprisingly, men have now started reacting to these types of threats instead of throwing it off in the thin air.

It is true that watching shows like Gossip Girls and Vampire Diaries just mind-screws us and have no positive effect on our lives (except for creating secret desires like wanting to be popular like Serena or have a hot vampire like Damon be head over heels for you). But, TV shows also succeed in bringing drastic changes in a lot of people's lives, or at least in a lot of women's lives.