That had to be said...

Source: MARD Facebook page

Why we should celebrate International Women's Day?

“The world has come a long way in the fight for women’s rights, but there is still a long way to go. In too many places around the globe, including my birthplace of Afghanistan, gender equality remains elusive. The struggle continues for millions of women. Today is International Women’s Day and it is a chance to celebrate the extraordinary achievements and contributions of women. It is a good day to raise awareness of the need for gender equality, and a good day to remember that this is not a feminist issue. When women are free to exercise their political, legal, and socioeconomic rights, we are all better off and we are all empowered.” – Khaled Hosseini (2015)

It was International Women’s Day two days ago and the above quote by famed author Khaled Hosseini beautifully sums up why the day is so important for the world. We have indeed come a long way but there is still a long, long way to go before we achieve that elusive balance between the two genders. How extraordinary is the idea of equality that we need a day in the year only to remind ourselves how much effort and struggle is still required to reach the goal where women get equal standing, equal place, equal rights, equal opportunities and equal respect to a man.

It is named as “women’s” day and we see just about everybody celebrating the women, telling everyone how wonderful this one-half of the human race is. Or is it the one-half? But we can come to that later. Let’s first look at how we celebrate the “International Women’s Day”. Since last few years, especially with the emergence of social media, Women’s Day is being used as a marketing tool. The Facebooks, Twitters, Whatsapps are full of messages promoting women as wonderful creations of God, special beings and probably someone superior to men. Corporates go out distributing flowers and cards, sometimes fulfilling their corporate social responsibility (CSR) by even giving a day off to ladies. Markets are full of Women’s Day special offers – Beauty Packages by Spas and Salons, Buy 1 Get 1 schemes at malls, Gifts, Jewellery, Chocolates, Flowers, Cards… You name it and it has a Women’s Day labelled gimmick to woo you.

But is that what this day is all about? Why on earth do we need to shout from rooftops how wonderful we are? And most importantly, why do we want to believe for the sake of saying that we are better than men when in spirit we do not even treat our own gender such? When women harass their daughters-in-law, why do we not tell them then how wonderful women are? When women are raped, assaulted and burnt alive, where are the men who tell them, “Oh! What a wonderful creation of God you are!”? When a girl child is aborted before it is born, why do the parents not feel proud to expect the “most special form of life” in their lives? And here is why we still are not one-half of the human race because even to this day, many of us are unwanted, uncared children of are parents even if we survive the birth. The truth is that women are not wonderful or special or better than men. The sad reality is that to this day, they are not even considered equal to men or as desired as men.

As I understand it, International Women's Day is about gender equality! It's not to prophesize in any way that women are better than men. The world will function better if we learn to use the synergies of a true and valued partnership of the two genders. A friend of mine shared some facts, which I would like to reproduce here. First set up in 1911, the celebration of International Women’s Day began, because women were demanding that they be given the "equal" right to vote - which they received in Britain in 1918 but just last year in Saudi Arabia. It's important to remember that even today not every where in the world and even in India are women "allowed" to hold public office and to be given equal employment rights as men. Women are still under-represented in parliament and in corporate in India and worldwide; they don't draw equal salaries for equal work performed; they still shoulder the primary burden in child rearing and are expected to do all domestic chores; healthcare for women is still not a priority in India and in most of the world; and moreover our streets are not even safe for women to be able to walk as equals to men. And it’s true… Our temples and mosques still bar women from entering their premises and circumstances beyond our control like widowhood and menstruation are still a taboo in many homes. Sexual Violence and domestic abuse still fill almost half the newspapers and that too when circa 70% of such crimes go unreported. Sometimes we wonder whether we should teach our women and children to scream “fire” instead of “rape”. It just might increase the chances of someone coming to help. Even in the US, that is considered the so-called epitome of development and democracy, there are more men named “John” serving as CEOs of Corporates as women in total.

In today’s times, even in day-to-day operation and even at places women are considered ‘liberated’ (and I have a very strong objection to that word being used in the sense it is used for women), we see general unintended and even natural behaviours that still highlight that the traditional mindsets have a long way to go. In my office, the CSR initiative team came to me to give some "tips" for the female employees in our company on how I maintain a work life balance and manage "both work and home". I refused to answer. Honestly, I think - and I told them so - this is the most clichéd and the most disturbing question asked to a woman because it reeks of implication that "home" is women's responsibility and work is something extra that they're doing. It implies that their work or career doesn't relieve them of their responsibility of managing the home. I simply asked the lady who approached me (and please notice that it was girl who came to me for the ‘advice’), “Have you asked the same question to my male colleagues? If yes, and if they've answered it, I will answer it otherwise I would excuse myself because as far as I am concerned home and children are as much a responsibility of men as of women, irrespective of whether they are working or not.”

I repeat – On this occasion of International Women’s Day, it's gender equality we should all talk about and not superiority of females over males. We should not believe in "role reversals", rather in "partnerships". If one day we believe we have achieved this balance in humanity and we do not need to celebrate this day any more, believe me all women like me would be very happy to forgo all the pampering, flowers and chocolates.

Just some fresh thoughts from today's news stories on JNU row

Kanhaiyya Kumar is just out on bail and the media has already started demanding an apology from Mr. Modi and his government. Well, Mr. Modi got a clean chit from the court, did they apologize then? Can anyone else not see double standards here?

The court has mentioned in clear terms in its order that the slogans shouted in JNU in the said rally were beyond limits of freedom of expression. Why is the media not telling this to us? The court has also mentioned that the sloganeering in JNU on the said evening, which also included "Indian Army murdabad", can hurt the sentiments of the families of the martyrs. Why is the media silent on this?

Much as I strongly condemn the doctoring of the video, it appears that as per logic of the media, we should forget the presence of Kanhaiyya Kumar in the rally evidenced in at least 5 other videos, just because 1 video was doctored. I would like to know what Kanhaiyya Kumar was doing at the centre-stage of the Pro-Afzal rally when the slogans were being shouted. Reciting poetry? He had booked the venue citing purpose as 'poetry recitation'. This was the poetry that was being recited over there.