Today we celebrate International Women's Day. While we can be proud of the significant progress already made, this day also reminds us work lies ahead to achieve true gender equality. Women's day celebration doesn't mean just dressing up and going out. It doesn't mean only having programmes, parties and celebration. It is much beyond all this. We should pursue justice and inclusion. Every government and organization working for Women's empowerment and gender equality should be applaused. We should try to reach out the women who are deprived of many things and who really need all this.
True celebration of Women's day will be in understanding Feminism in the right sense and working for it.
Basically, women should develop the right attitude towards feminism. Feminism doesn't mean not cooking or going against men or freedom from everything. It means Choice. The change should come from women themselves. Why should women consider maternity, motherhood and household work as a burden? That is our privilege, a source of power as the next generation is in our domain. We must know how to convert this into a source of power. Women should know how to work democratically. Women are better conservators and better perseverers and a better future. They are the hope of the future. They should be proud of it and should make positive use of it. But we must admit that men do accept our success. We need to honour men who have feminism within them. Without their full support we cannot make a better world.
In the rural areas, women are paid less than men and often lag behind in access to education, training, technologies and mobility. They also work longer days than men taking both paid and unpaid work into consideration. They face gender -related constraints that limit their access to decent work as well as their productivity. Here is where feminism is needed.
No enduring solution to the major changes of our day from climate change to political and economic instability can be solved without the full empowerment and participation of the worlds women. Women's full empowerment and participation in the political and economic arena is fundamental to democracy and justices which people are demanding. Women are an important indicator of the development of a nation and global well-being - so in a way Feminism is beneficial to men too.
True celebration of Women's day will be in recognizing the qualities of a woman and saluting her virtues. A woman many a times sacrifices her self-respect, dignity, ambitions and life purpose for her loved ones. In some cases she also tolerates disrespectful and abusive behaviour to maintain peace in the family. A woman is kind, humble, honest, generous, loyal, modest, obedient, patient diligent, has love, prudence, self confidence and practices self control and forgiveness. A woman has amazing inner strength and can carry the weight of the world and inspite of that she is gentle to comfort. She can keep going when everyone else gives up and takes care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining. She has the sensitivity to live in all circumstances, even if she is hurt badly. Wherever you go, through out the world, women are connected well. Their dreams and aspirations connect them as much as their reality and situation. The instinct of a homemaker and mother traverses political and cultural boundaries. From this Women's day let us salute all these virtues of women.
So also much of the work of women goes unrecognized because it is not remunerated and confined to the domestic sphere. That has to be saluted. Women and their contribution is to be valued. This should be the purpose of Women's day celebration.
Adv Ashwini Deshpande
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