Just now in America, in a few federal jails, they are experimenting by mixing women prisoners and men prisoners together; up to now the jails were separate. After just a few months’ experience, strange conclusions have come to light. The most important is that the male prisoners have become less dangerous. A certain calmness and quietness…just because of the presence of the women amongst them. And the jail psychologists are simply surprised. The very ferocious criminals, murderers, rapists, even they have started behaving in a better way. They have started shaving twice a day!
In their jails they are running out of Eau de Cologne because the men are asking continuously for Eau de Cologne; they don’t want that the women should notice that they are smelling badly. They are asking for combs and mirrors – new demands that they had never bothered about before. They are taking regular baths and asking for fresh clothes every day. Their habits have changed; otherwise they were constantly fighting and quarreling amongst themselves. But the presence of women has changed the whole atmosphere.
Although they are not allowed to make love…the prisoners are complaining only of one thing. They have not raped any woman, which was expected: whether you allow it or not. They have been raping outside the jail – that’s why they have been put in jail! And you provide women; it is taking a risk. But no woman has been raped in the jail. On the contrary, their complaint is that, since women have come into the jail, they are being constantly watched, and that has become a tension in their minds.
The jail authorities are constantly watching from every window, from every door, from every keyhole. They are watching that no harm is being done to the women, and the prisoners have complained, “This is insulting, this is humiliating us. Nobody is behaving badly with the women, but being constantly watched is against human dignity. We may be criminals but still we are human beings, and we don’t want that the whole night somebody is watching. We cannot even sleep without being watched.” Otherwise they are very happy and they have welcomed the women. And the women have also been in for a great surprise – nobody has harmed them and the atmosphere has suddenly lost its heat, anger, and a certain calmness has settled.
If all over the world the woman is allowed freedom to grow to her potential, there will be many, many women enlightened; many, many women mystics, poets, painters. And they will enhance not only the woman’s part of the world – because the world is one – they will enhance the whole world. They will give man also new dimensions because their ways of seeing things are different. Man looks at things in one way; the woman looks from a different perspective. Life will become richer.