Until Our Girls Are Empowered Enough To Stand Up Fearlessly To Exploiters, Women’s Day Might Be Necessary

We need to empower our girls so that they can hit back if they are exploited. Until then, we need special privileges for women.

The world celebrated Woman’s Day this week, but I can’t be happy about it. Surprised? The reason is very simple, very few among the many women who are wishing each other on this day remember or celebrate womanhood in their day to day life.

Woman’s Day is not about wishing all your friends in the Whatsapp group or Facebook “Happy Woman’s Day to all the Pretty Ladies I Know”.  It is about celebrating the woman you are. And do we really need one day in a whole year to do that? Celebrating oneself should be about every day of your whole life.

Every time a girl after achieving something proudly tells her parents, “I am not your daughter, am your son!”, she defeats her own womanhood. Every time you expect your husband to bring you chocolates and roses for you on Woman’s Day, you are defeating your womanhood. Go and buy them yourself, not just on this day, but whenever you feel like. Why do you need to wait for a man to give you gifts? And if he does get you gifts, he should be getting them just because! Not because it is Women’s Day.

How many women are strong enough to accept it if their husband says he wants to be a stay-at-home husband while you work? If you earn enough, then why not? If a woman can choose to be a home-maker, then why can’t a husband? Why is such a stigma attached to it? Not just by men but by us women as well. Is your respect and place in society solely dependent on what your husband does? And you have no role to play in it?

I appreciate every single step taken towards the equal rights for women, but not just today but whenever it happens. Stop shouting that we need to be given respect – that only proves that we don’t already have it.

I believe there is only one thing that we have lesser than men in most cases, and i.e. physical strength. If women were as strong as men physically, if each slap would have re-vibrated with another one on the man’s cheek, if each bad touch could have been returned with a punch in the gut, we would not need any Woman’s Day to remind us we are women.

Instead of sending wishes, every mother who has a daughter should promise herself to train her daughter in some sort of martial arts, so that whatever day it is she will never be the ‘weaker sex’.

Never miss real stories from India's women.

Register Now

I know that the first comment on this will come from most men against what am saying – to take away the ladies’ seats in most public buses in our country. (It is such a common refrain with men.) Then I would just like to point out, these seats at least save some women from the elbow poking, indecent touching, and various other forms of perverted pleasures that some men get out of it.

Till the day comes when every girl will be able to hit back, let those seats remain. A little girl going to school might be saved from staring innocently at the ‘uncle’ standing behind her and trying to understand why is he pushing himself into her back every time the bus moves.

I do not need a Woman’s Day because my whole life is My Days and I will celebrate them as I rightly deserve.

Published earlier here.

Image source: self defence by Shutterstock.

Comments