International Women's Day – 100 th Anniversary

There is an adage in telugu "Yekkada sthreelu gauravimpa badataaro akkada devathalu poojalu andukuntaaru". (In Sanskrit - yatra naryastu poojyante tatra deva ramnataha) which means, “where women are honoured there the Gods rejoice”.

Indian tradition has generally respected womanhood and though we do find derogatory references to women, India has always given equal rights to women.

• We represent our country as our mother - Bharat Mata.
• Indian constitution gave the right for women to vote from the first elections itself unlike many of the now developed countries.
• Women were given an equal and important role during the struggle for Indian Independence.
• Indian women played a major role in Indian politics and economics.

This March 8^th marks the 100^th anniversary of the International Women's Day (IWD).
In these 100 years, a phenomenal change can be observed for this day, from an International Working Women's day to protest the inequalities in work to a day marking global celebration of women. Like every year many events are organised around the world to mark economic, political and social achievements of women.

Why dedicate a day as International Women’s Day???

To paraphrase what United Nations General Assembly says, the day’s significance is to recognize the equality and development of women and to acknowledge the contribution of women in strengthening the society.

For women this day signifies an occasion to review the progress achieved in their struggle to achieve equality and development and also an opportunity to unite, network and mobilize for a meaningful change. India has achieved a considerable success in attaining the equality status for women by providing special quotas for upliftment in Education, Employment and Political sectors. Indian woman has made their mark in every field whether its Art or Sport, you name it and you can find a woman on the top list. India has come a long way in eradicating girl child killing, the domestic violence but still a lot of issues are to be addressed.

The global theme for this year’s Women’s day is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”. Though there is a significant progress in Indian community in terms of woman education, economic and political empowerment, there still needs much to be done. The access to technology for Indian women has increased drastically but still the literacy percentage compared to men is less. There are many places where education is not viable for girls or the drop out rates is very high because of inadequate facilities in schools.

The other areas where significant improvement is required in developing countries like India is the healthcare and security. In the health care sector special care is needed towards maternal health and eradicating congenital diseases. In India, every year about 78,000 mothers die in childbirth and as per WHO, around 65% of deaths across the world are from 11 countries including India. To put the statistics in a different view one in 120 mothers of South Asia die during childbirth.

Just imagine one among 120 has to die just because she is a woman and this is happening in this age of Internet and great medical advances. It seems that preventing congenital heart diseases cost around 100 crores per annum and these are peanuts compared to our total budget and this can save around 1.5 lac children every year. The problem is not with the money but lack of vision and sensible policies.

Gandhiji once said “Our Nation will have achieved true independence and freedom when a woman can walk in the midnight all alone and feels safe”. 

This is not the case in current India and doesn’t seem to be achieved in near future considering the number of violent attacks that are happening against women. Though we have strict laws against these cruel acts, implementation of strict law becomes the problem. Media is playing an important role in exposing such events, but is more concentrating on TRP ratings than fighting till end to bring justice to the victims.

There is still discrimination, though diminishing now a days, among boy and girl child. It’s the duty of every one of us to honor every girl/woman and make sure they get an equal opportunity. I heartfully thank each and every woman in my life who has directly or indirectly inspired me and helped me.

PS: While writing this blog I realized many great things about Indian women, but to keep the post short, thought of writing about it in a separate post.