Do we really need a Women's day?
Hello everyone,
Today is 8th March 2017. The day is celebrated as an International Women's Day. Therefore, at the outset I would like to wish every one a very Happy Women's Day. At least we have one day out of 365 days when we can call it as ours, when we are made to feel special, when our Facebook and Whats app are flooded with messages of Happy Women's Day, when every second person find its obligatory on his part to wish us or do something special for us and so on ......
The big or small institutions/ organisations try to organize a seminar or workshop on women related issues, few make certain announcements for women emancipation, few give promotions to their female employees and many such things are being done to mark the celebration of Women's Day. And at the end of the day any media house would be flooded with press releases on Women''s Day celebration and so was ours. No doubt reporters ran high and low to cover the occasions. In the midst of all this I was prompted to share my thoughts on the Women's Day celebration, not as a media person but as common women.
Its ironical but big thanks to the male chauvinistic society that has been kind enough to dedicate one day out of an year to half of the population of the world. It seems as if they say "Go and enjoy your day", today is yours and 364 days are ours". But do we really need such recognition from the other half of the world. I don't want to go into the details of why and when the need for women's day arose, BUT my simple concern is, Do we really need one such special day? Why can't we remain special and respected for the entire year? More so, Why recognition from our counterparts?
Agree or not but I firmly believe that a Single Day celebration in the name of Women's Day is not going to change the situation of 50% population of the world. The mindset of the men and also of the women has to be changed. Some may ponder why mindset of women, after all they are the victims. I say why not women? Perhaps we devised different rules for our sons and daughters, we never asked our sons to return home early but we had always set a time frame for our daughters. The daughters-in-law have always remained an alien when it comes to prominent decisions of the family but when it comes to household job, the house is 'hers'. She is none but the most discredited, thankless creature who looks after the family. (While I was writing my peice my Elder son said "Mamma jo ek din milta hai wo bhi nahi chahiye", (you don't need even the single day you get). It wasn't a part of my piece but I mentioned it to prove the difference observed in the mindset of men and women.). The debate can be long and may not even find its conclusive end but I only want to raise my voice on how we grow our sons and daughters, the values we impart on them. Two rules for two halves of the world. WHY?
The biological differences created by God between man and woman is the beauty of the Universe. He never made one strong and the other feeble. He made us with our own exclusive strengths and weaknesses. But unfortunately we destroyed the beauty of the universe. One half started dominating and victimizing the other half of the world, the other half readily accepted it as their destiny. The scenario is still the same.
Very nice definitions on women and womanhood kept on floating on all social sites but a body of flesh and blood does not run by definitions, it run by emotions, by feelings. Look around yourself you will find ample number of people advocating equality for women but that is only a superficial statement. Go and find out, do they actually practice it? There's a lot of difference between what they say and what they do.
It is oft quoted, "Actions speak louder than words". We would not have needed any Women's day, had Actions spoken louder than Words of the so called advocates of women equality. We are already equals, we don't need recognition from anybody, its just that we need to understand our importance and learn to respect our self esteem.
