Skip to main content

Women's Day - 6 Doable Suggestions for Enabling Women

Come March, and the world starts preparing to celebrate International Women's Day. To honour the place of women in their lives and in the public sphere, to acknowledge them, and also perhaps to compensate for days of neglect or bullying?

The fact that we still have to have such token days to acknowledge the contribution of women says a lot about the place of women - still second citizen in most countries.

If you are a policy maker/public persona (any gender), instead of gifting women vouchers and restaurant reservations, or worse chocolates and token gifts, there are some concrete ways you can help making Women's Day an everyday celebration.

Here goes:

  • Make public places comfortable for women. At any time of the day, in any attire, women should be able to walk the road with her head held high. No sneers, no judgemental stares, no harassment. Just an equal right to be at public places, whether a park, a pub or a cinema hall.
  • Support your own women. Share household chores. Listen to your wife/sister/daughter/mother when she shares her thoughts. Do not rush to offer solutions, just listen.
  • At work, take sexual harassment cases seriously - like you would take a case of perjury or fraud. Have a speedy process of complaint redressal. Don't allow any employee to judge the complainant.
  • Encourage women to share thoughts, ideas, suggestions on how every day can be Women's Day. You will be surprised to hear a lot of constructive, doable suggestions.
  • Watch your own behaviour for casual sexism and misogyny.
    It is not easy to wash away years of conditioning overnight. Be your own sentry. Keep checking yourself when you judge another woman.
  • Hold women equally accountable for any wrongdoing. Do not let them off easily saying, "Ohh, she's just a woman, poor thing." She is equally culpable for punishment. Equality comes from both ends.
Life in all its glories or potholes should equally enjoyable and challenging for men, women, trans people.


Then, it will be the apt celebration of Women's Day in its truest sense.


#WomensDay #WomenEmpowerment #EqualRightsForWomen #EqualityforAll #March8 #InternationalWomensDay

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guru Dutt - Legacy of an Overlooked Genius

"Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaae to Kya Hai:" This heartfelt anguish was literally personified by film maker and actor extraordinaire - Guru Dutt, whose birth centenary happens to be tomorrow (July 9).  Maestro or Failed Genius? All his life, he strove to depict his vision, his dreams on celluloid. Yet, even as he strove for success, for renown, he was a bit of a recluse, a black sheep himself. It was as if he wanted to challenge the language of popular cinema by being within the format, from the inside. His women had brains, taxi drivers and masseurs were philosophers, sex workers pined for spiritual ecstasy, and friendships blossomed between unlikely people. Common people on the street spoke wiser logic than academics or high-nosed editors. The topics of the films may seem dated now, but the eternal truths voiced in them remain relevant.   His films were distinctly different from other popular Hindi films. They had all the commercial elements of song, dance, comedy, romanc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...
1 comment
Read more

Book review - The Stationery Shop of Tehran

Iranian writer, Marjan Kamali's The Stationery Shop of Tehran is a remarkable and touching book. Like all literature set in countries with a deeply troubled history, this book too revolves around disillusionment, pain and the desperate struggle to live a normal life.  Akin to Khalid Hosseini, Kamali intertwines the political in the personal lives of her protagonists. Class struggle also plays a major role, like education or the lack of it. The story spans over six decades and two continents, starting from 1953 Iran to New England, US in early 2013. Love lost, Lives Shattered Young lovers, Roya and Bahman try to hold on to their love in the face of all pettiness and politics, but the aftermath of trauma runs too deep.  Just as their country plunges into another political upheaval, their lives are shattered and they are thrown apart.  Yet, Kamali makes her story deeply human and optimistic. Her lovers are genuinely good human beings, kind, forgiving and full of empathy. In...
Post a Comment
Read more