Women have always been strong. Strong in a rugged, bear-all-and-trudge-on way that typifies the identities of longsuffering, enduring and resilient. We got used to them silently moving past those things that broke and branded them with hurts and pain. They often could not, or would not, turn around those circumstances because everything else contrived against their story. Instead of refuge and respite when they tried to fight back, society responded to their stories with them shaming and retribution. In the end, they learnt to rally their inner wills, bury their hurts and move on; broken but making the best of what pieces they could salvage.
Then came the social media, and our women trying to break the chains of just being in the shadows, being invisible and not taking a stand empowered by Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram have become even stronger with voices that have grown from painful grunts to murmured questions to assertive demands for answers.