Madhuparna
This month we celebrated the International Women’s Day, around the world. Well, at least in most parts of it. It is indeed an important day for the entire female fraternity. It tells the world how important we are to the society and how we also make an equal contribution to its growth. It’s great, indeed. But, even as a woman, I have difficulty in understanding that why is it important to have one day, singled out from the calendar to ‘celebrate womanhood’? It’s a dichotomy in itself when we say that we are equal to men and that we should have the same rights as the opposite gender and yet we need one day (just one day) to reinstate our existence? Don’t we exist otherwise for the rest of the year, doing things that we do? What is different on March 8? In all honesty, the day has just boiled down to a consumer-driven, marketing ploy that is ‘targeted towards women and their lifestyle’. Not to sound condescending to brands and their marketing efforts (I’m a marketing professional myself!) this is exactly what Women’s Day has come to mean? Gifting and being gifted, partying, and celebrating, because we just have another day to our ‘events calendar’. As a woman, I believe this is shallow, in all possible manners. And if truth be told, we actually aren’t making much of a difference today than what our preceding generations of women probably did! In a way, we are in a regressive mode. What happened in the days when women were scientists, philosophers, great authors, and leaders? Did they have a day of celebration to announce their contribution to the world? No they did not. And we all know that they did more than what we are doing now. As a woman of today I can proudly say that they were more real and were of more substance. I often have this argument with my female friends who believe that ‘women should be given equal rights as men’.
First of all, what is equality? Is it just doing the same things? Or living the same lifestyle? Wearing the same clothes? Having same perceptions of the world? Or is it just about ‘knowing’ that you are at par with your opposite gender? It’s an irony that we would even desire all that when we are neither biologically nor psychologically wired to do so. There really is no competition. A women’s psyche is largely defined by her hormones, which is least likely the case with men. We are naturally designed to be more sensitive and emotional towards life in general than our counterparts. Then how on earth can we even think like our counterparts? And everything that we say, do, believe, stems from how we think and perceive. We have started to think because it has been put in our heads over generations.
It is cardinally unfair to even start to equate ourselves when we are not equipped by nature to be so. Or are we so beyond Nature that we can take a call of how we should evolve? There is goes, a paradox in making. For all you know that the disruption we face today is because we are refusing to align ourselves with nature. And is also a part of that disruptive move. When we repent about how our preceding generations lived in a healthy natural environment, it is only because they lived and followed a pre-defined system. They did not question what was given to them. I am not saying it was right or wrong, (because there were a lot of wrongs but a handful of right things too) but it was definitely running in an order.
Secondly, when we talk about ‘we the women’ or the ‘women of the society’, there is a huge gap of facts and fantasy. Wanting equal rights cannot be stuck to the boardroom and fighting for equal pay, or not wanting to do household chores because ‘oh I am a working woman’. The woman who really need to be liberated are not the ones sitting in designer outfits in a corner office or the one who goes soul searching on a solo backpacking trip. She is the one who is still struggling to have the basic hygiene in her village, the one who is sick of her abusive family members, and the teenage girl who is not ready to be a mother yet. You will never see these women celebrating Women’s Day, and yet, they carry on with their lives, living on their hopes and dreams. They don’t care about equality. All they want is their lives to get better. It doesn’t matter if they end up earning less than their husband, because at least they can earn and be independent. It won’t matter if they end up doing more work, because that will fulfill their needs. The point is that our identification of these needs have become really, really skewed.
Our basic understandings of life are so shaken, so shallow that we have forgotten the one most important thing- that we all have our roles to play. Most importantly, whether it is a man or a woman, unless we fulfill our part completely and to all honesty, we have absolutely no right to point a finger on anyone else. If you live in a house, you have to do certain things, whether you are a man or a woman. If your work calls for late nights from time to time, you have to do it. Here we go again. We talk about being equal to men and then we also have to complain about ‘how can you let a female employee sit till late hours’? Err…isn’t that the biggest irony ever?At the end, what should matter is to get the work done. Why and how does it matter who does the dishes or who makes the client presentation? Who earns more or less? Yes we do need men to be on the same page, but I have to say, we brought this on us! Not today, not now, but over years and years of instilling information that kept deviating us from the basic understanding of how to live like a human being where people help fulfill each other’s needs. And I am not talking about men who are unjust, ruthless people and who involve in physical and verbal abuse and assault. That is for another day. But this is more about a normal environment, where you work and live with people who like and can connect with. In such environments throwing the ‘I’m a woman’, card is really not needed. The more we do, the worse it becomes. It already has. And more so for those women who really need freedom. Not people like you, me, who have the information, education, knowledge, and intelligence to deal with things in a wise manner.
And as a last point, there’s something that keeps bothering me about this ‘man-woman equality’ fiasco. If equality is about rights, roles, and rewards, then where do we place those men who fulfill the role of a woman within a family? A single father is also a mother to his children, like a son is to his parents who have lost their daughter. What about gay parents? They are mothers and fathers at the same time, aren’t they? Then what about their equality to have fulfill a certain role at home or in the society? Where do we place them? Or is that we don’t care? For good or for worse, we don’t talk about these things. We don’t want to. Because, if we keep talking, we will get wound up in our own net of complications that we had so beautifully woven over years and years.
In a time when all we should be busy saving our environment and the planet, we are busy fighting these petty battles and trying to prove a point which in all technicality, never existed.
