Women’s Day

I really have no idea who started this Women’s Day-a man or a woman. Forget whoever found this but for all those who celebrate it especially in India; I want all you women out there to take few minutes and think whether it is a real celebration.

And men folks am not a feminist. Am not telling men and women are equal. I agree, I understand and I accept this is a Man’s world. So all you men don’t feel upset that we women have special day like this. I tell you in this country only one day is for women but the rest are all Men’s. So cheer up and pamper your women at least once a year.

I agree in India women have come a long way but can we assure that we are 100% free of female infanticide or child marriage. There is this serial Balika Vadhu in Colors Channel. My husband keeps teasing me of how emotional I get with the characters in that. It’s not a regular Soap but one which shows us the state of women in remote places of India even in this century, that too in a very rich family. It’s all about child marriage and how women in that society are treated especially by fellow women, just because they were treated those way years back. It’s not only in this serial but it’s their in many middle class houses in this country. I agree there are lot of women who are supposed to be celebrated; all the mothers in the world are to be appreciated, but let us leave that for the Mother’s Day! Women’s day is largely to celebrate womanhood and I don’t see enough reasons as a community. One in a thousand women could have made it where they want in this country. But the rest……All those middle class women who slog in the office, get back home and also slog in the house to take care of the needs of her husband, kids, in-laws. But the men get back to home either to read the newspaper that they did not complete in the morning or watch the news channels all playing the same. The day the husbands of every working women in the country share all the household responsibility with their wives I believe womanhood is celebrated in this country. The day all the mothers-in-law of the country start treating their working daughters-in-law the same way they treat their sons and their own daughters, I will accept celebrations for womanhood. I know a friend of mine who was sharing with me an incident. When she gets back from office with her husband as tired as him or even much more, she enters the home to see the way her husband is offered water and pampered by his mother, but she has to get back to her routine household chores. She doesn’t have her mother living with her and hence she has no right to get pampered. The day a woman’s parents can live with her daughter with the same liberty as the man’s and with no guilt I will accept this celebration, rather I will celebrate for men too. A woman who is handling the kitchen makes dishes that are relished by her husband and her kids, never for herself and am one of them. Compromise is there in every walk of a woman’s life. Am not saying men don’t compromise but for women it’s a part and parcel of life.

I believe that women are this way not cos of any biological nature but cos of cultural conditioning that is so deeply ingrained that it often looks like a gender-specific chromosomal trait rather than a product of a biased nurture.