When is Women’s Day ?

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition

Marilyn Monroe

Come the Eighth of March and the world is awash in pink. Women’s Day Wishes fly around like so many interdepartmental memos in the ‘Ministry of Magic’ a la` Harry Potter world. There are promotions and promises, programs and prizes and articles (mea culpa) and awards which begin anywhere between a month to a day in advance. Everyone and their aunt and uncle ‘celebrate’ womanhood. Having made the right noises, everything is then wrapped in cotton wool and laid away carefully awaiting the next yearly outing.

It is an open secret that women in many societies are a repressed lot who carry the heavier end of the stick. A day to celebrate them is therefore a small way of acknowledging them and their vast contributions to society. It is an occasion for acceptance and appreciation which otherwise remains confined to the background. An occasion when the mostly voiceless are given a chance to be vociferous.

If the greetings which make their way on social media are to be believed, all women are possessed with superhuman powers, which become apparent only on the eighth of March. Perhaps they are hiding under a bushel the rest of the year? Touted as multitasking individuals, who can not only take on but also finish every assigned job at the drop of a hat, women are placed at the pinnacle of impossible achievements. Most media outlets, whether conventional or social seem to abound in achievers who are swiftly felicitated to make the correct corporate statements. Women of all shapes and sizes put their feet up, let their hair down and a general good time is had by all. So far, so fair and so frothy.

At the cost of sounding cynical, or even worse, critical of my own kind, I say that Women’s Day though important, nevertheless plays more on women’s inherent need of acceptance and appreciation than any concrete agenda for true emancipation. In many cases, it devolves into a feel-good thing to assuage the guilt which has built up over the course of the remaining three hundred and sixty- four days of the year. Something akin to offering a candy to a child to divert its attention from a badly scraped knee. While the candy is a good idea, the real need is to clean and dress the knee so that it can speed up the healing process.

It is but natural that men and women are different. Nature, of course has a strict no exemptions rule. Women trying to equal men in certain respects is simply not feasible. Nor should they try to. What is needed is for them to find common ground and let each other be, without stereotyping roles for either. The fine line which divides them, and believe me it still exists, needs to be not so much erased as annihilated, through genuine camaraderie, without continually viewing the other as a mercenary adversary. The discovery that they complement each other in more ways than thought possible can be liberating, while giving each other a more sympathetic outlook to the hurdles the other faces. And thus, the lofty ideal of the two being the two wheels of a chariot can spring to life instead of staying confined to the imaginary world of writers and their ilk. As long as the chariot runs smoothly, no one said anything about the wheels being exactly the same, the Tata Nano with its mismatched front and rear wheels being a prime example.

What we as women need, is to stop seeking validation not just for everything we do, but in some cases for our very existence. Strangely there is a flip side to this, in which some women expect to be continually complimented and lauded for being women, conveniently divesting themselves of traditional roles while staunchly refusing to don new ones. This will merely have the effect of widening the gap between the genders till it becomes first a chasm and then a yawning void. If it is equality that we seek, then it is important to remember that it works both ways. Act like a hot-house flower all you like, but then stop complaining about being confined to the hot house.

If we take pride in being touted as complete beings and truly believe in it then we will experience complete contentment too, without unnecessary competition. No one doubts that a fight for rights IS the right fight, but to fight just for the sake of ‘one upmanship’ would be akin to accepting defeat. It is the belief of the world in general and India in particular that women even after being awarded equal rights need to ‘prove’ themselves. This is equal to proclaiming males to be something more. Who suffers in this case? Women of course! By being trapped in their own thoughts and minds.

It is time for women to seek true equality and liberation. Equality in the eyes of the law, in family matters and in available opportunities. It is time to embrace the essence of ourselves, which make us different, unique even. The day we decide not to indulge the need of unnecessary competition with men, will be the day when we will truly wake. We will make our own pedestals and keep them in what will be truly our own space. Each day will be earmarked, because a single day to celebrate us is not enough. Every day will be ‘Women’s Day’!