International Women’s Day

March 8th! A day marked for women! Internationally!

A day marked to talk about gender equality, women’s rights, their contribution to society, their grit, their empathy, their love, their sacrifice and all that stuff!

And then comes March 9th, and it’s all over, forgotten, done and dusted. Business as usual! Who remembers what was talked about yesterday! Who remembers women and their contributions? Oh did we talk about gender equality? Of course! Because that is a good topic to earn brownie points. Deify women on a day, put them on a pedestal only to be shoved under the drawers the next day.

It reminds me of many indian festivals when we decorate our deities, pray to them, do all the dance and drama to show our love, allegiance and surrender to them, and then the next day go and immerse their idols with all pomp and show in the sea only to be gathered and binned later.

Do we need women to be made deities on one day and then forgotten the next day? Is this what is equality? Is this what “giving” equal rights all about? And to begin with, who needs to “give”! The mere fact that somebody needs to give something to women puts them in a superior position. Women are 50% (or so) of humans on this planet. God created them in much the same way as men! The process was exactly the same! Then when did this happen that 50% of the population start thinking of themselves as “givers” and the remaining 50% of the population started thinking of themselves as “takers”. Takers of the largesse that men feel they are the givers of!

I often hear men say, “I have given my wife the freedom to work.” “I have given my wife the liberty to do what she wants for herself’, “I have given my daughter the same freedom as my son.” and so on! Excuse me! “I have given!?” Who are you to give!

Equality is not given, it is a state of being. We are equals! Period!

So as women, let’s not be happy in our deification or in celebrating a day in the year as “Women’s Day”! We don’t need a women’s day! We don’t need to be “given” anything! We are equal, whether anyone chooses to agree or not is their problem not ours!

So wishing every woman a Happy Women’s Day, Year and Life because we all must celebrate ourselves for who we are every single day of our being alive!