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Serena Williams’ open letter published in the British newspaper Guardian is well worth a read. It highlights the need for equality – equality in pay and equality in status – of female athletes.
Women’s participation in sports has come a long way in the past few decades. Once again, an arena which was gender biased, is no more so. For the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Indian team of 117 athletes had 63 women and 54 women. An idealist close to 50-50 number.
However, we still celebrate the success of female athletes with the connotation of ‘being female’. PV Sindhu’s silver at the Rio Olympics was celebrated as the first ever silver by an Indian woman in badminton. Sakshi Malik’s bronze was also described the same way.
And all of India celebrated this victory (as per social media posts) as women doing what men could not do at the Rio Olympics.
However, when we celebrate women’s victory as different from men’s, when we refer to women athletes as ‘female athletes’ but men just as athletes, our fight against discrimination is still not complete.
Serena Williams’ letter contests this. Quoting her here: “As we know, women have to break down many barriers on the road to success. One of those barriers is the way we are constantly reminded we are not men, as if it is a flaw. People call me one of the “world’s greatest female athletes”. Do they say LeBron is one of the world’s best male athletes? Is Tiger? Federer? Why not?”
Till date, the desire to pursue sports is treated differently for boys and girls. Along with competing on the field, women constantly have to fight their gender too.
“What others marked as flaws or disadvantages about myself – my race, my gender – I embraced as fuel for my success”, says Serena.
This fight against gender should cease to exist. Hopefully the amazing sportswomen the world is churning out, enables this generation to come to see no difference between men and women on the field.
As Serena says, “My dream wasn’t like that of an average kid, my dream was to be the best tennis player in the world. Not the best “female” tennis player in the world.”
I am sure this is how all our little girls start. To be the best tennis player, or the best firefighter or the best doctor – till the world slowly slots them as ‘female’.
One parent at a time, we need to create a world where our girls don’t see the world any differently from what the boys do. And our boys don’t assume superiority, at any level, by virtue of gender.
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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