Every Step You Take Matters

What is an indicator of empowerment? More specifically, female empowerment. A good academic degree? Regular paychecks? A top leadership position? Could very well be.

At least, any or all of these could be the doorways to possible empowerment for a woman. This meh question does not serve my purpose of writing this piece though.

Let me rephrase the question a bit. How is female empowerment manifested?

Neither a trivial question this is, nor an easy one to answer. Because to answer this, one has to know as to what empowerment means, especially for women of today. And if you ask those women, you are sure to get a myriad of answers. To have the authority to speak out. To have the power to decide. To have the confidence to be.

There is another obvious one -- to have the freedom to move, and this is where I want to take you today. Shoes. Yes, as matter of fact as they might seem as part of one’s get-up, shoes can be, in fact, shoes really are manifestations of empowerment. Or the lack thereof.

High-heel pumps or stilettos have been quite the norms for fashionable footwear for women. Compare those with men’s shoes, and one cannot help but wonder how and why on earth did these unnatural, ill-postured things become the standard pedestals that are supposed to support women while they stand, work or walk, for hours on end.

From being endless sources of blisters to sprained ankles, and from hindering speedy walks, when needed, to causing accidents on roads, accelerators or tubes due to the pointy nature, these shoes are in no way friends to the women on the go.

Add to that the long-term damage to health due to the harmful postures they force the wearers into, and you almost suspect some sort of pre-designed conspiracy to hold women back or to make their path uncomfortable at the very least.

By needlessly sexualizing the feet, such footwear appears to aid male gaze and nothing else. Under the guise of making such fashion the ‘choice’ of women themselves, the prevalent culture only hinders female empowerment.

It is not tenacity of women at play when they endure such shoes, rather mere conformity to existing unhealthy practices. To not have that worriless ease of being able to walk briskly or run if needed to, say, catch a bus or to hurry through a fire escape cannot be true freedom of movement.

How many times have we seen female characters in movies coming home and flinging open those torturous shoes to tend to their sore feet? Or changing into comfy shoes at their workplaces whenever they have a breather?

Funnily enough these are shown simply as well-accepted ways of life and almost never from an angle of critique, thus perpetuating the notion that this is normal.

The same is true in real life, too. Please don’t tell me that such shoes are women’s own choices borne out of their free will. There are office rules, formal or unwritten, there are peer pressures, and there are social norms propagated down a few generations.

And all that culminates into a certain image of a “smart” woman, be it in professional settings or everyday outings or occasional events. Very few people are even aware of its overwhelming existence, and those who are can hardly ever defy or ignore it.

It is only as recently as in 2025 that the Cannes film festival authorities changed their official shoe code to include shoes without heels by specifying “Elegant shoes and sandals with or without a heel (no sneakers).” This was done after much previous controversies regarding actresses being denied entry for wearing flats.

The situation with Bangladeshi women is a tad bit different though. We seldom carry ourselves in such overly agonizing shoes. Our footwear is comparatively more down to earth.

But similar kind of fashion senses have been prevalent nonetheless. I am mostly talking about urban educated class here. Women here have been mostly used to wearing flat to medium-heeled sandals with their daily attires such as salwar-kameez and saris.

The heels tend to get higher with party clothes. Albeit better than their high-altitude pointy counterparts, the shoes worn by our women are still quite bothersome. They are known to be slippery in wet weather, not give adequate cover in the cold, and are unsuitably loose for any necessary hurried responses in a crowd.

You do sometimes find one from the pair of sandals lying here and there that got separated from its owner during any such actions in haste.

But the good news is that a shift from such footwear practices can be observed recently in our society. Women on the streets are seen to be wearing sneakers more and more in recent times.

We had the (bigoted) notion in the past that trainers with saris were only worn by all those senior citizen “khalamma”s for their daily group walks. And we obviously did not think too highly of this rather ‘strange’ combination.

Women would not even consider wearing sneakers with salwar-kameez, let alone with a sari. To us, saris were too delicate, too aesthetic, too beautifully “feminine” to be accompanied with such tomboyish accessories.

Surprising how the scenario has changed in recent times! Smart women of all ages are now putting on sneakers with any clothing they wish to wear, and are indeed carrying this get-up so confidently that it is becoming a new fashion trend.

Not only on roads but also in office spaces, shops, fun outings and everywhere. So much so that a few such cases can be seen even in gatherings like birthday parties and weddings.

I am confident that if the sales statistics were studied, this shift in preference would be quite evident from the hikes in number of sneakers sold. The obvious comfort of usage, teamed up with an ease in movements, has a true empowering capacity that these women are inevitably experiencing.

This is a silent but sure shift in how our outgoing women are viewing their freedom on the move, and prioritizing their choice of shoes accordingly. They seem to have realized that every step matters, and shoes are there for liberating, not constricting. Never knew a pair of trainers could be such effortless symbols of empowerment for us womenfolk!

The author is a physics professor.