Women's day everyday!!!

Today is International women's day. A day when even the most anti-feminists and conservative misogynists go on public platforms and proclaim their supposed stand for womens rights. Brands vie for women customers with catchy phrases and slogans. Discounts and special privileges for ladies are raining all over. My whatsapp is filled with congratulatory messages and wishes for women empowerment. 

Ironically in many households, villages and small cities this concept is still alien and misunderstood. And tomorrow all this will become yesterday. The same women being revered, wished and enticed yesterday will be ridiculed, mistreated or ignored. Hence I used to abhor the concept of celebrating women on a single day allocated to us. The feminist in me maybe raged at the idea of a women's day when women were being raped, harassed, burnt and mistreated left right and centre. Until I saw the statistics......

I saw that so many countries still refuse to recognise women as beings that deserve fundamental rights and respect. I saw statistics and data where women are disallowed basic amenities, regards and dignity. They are mutilated, sold at young age, covered from head to toe, enclosed by rules and walls, lynched for demanding rights or celebrating women's day. Even developed countries like USA and Israel do not officially recognise women's day. Simultaneously you can see their archaic mentality hidden well behind western ideologies. Reproductive rights, workplace harassment rights and legal rights being some of them. Be it there or here, home or workplace, family or society women face hurdles every single second, minute and day. We fight these battles sometimes silently with resilience and sometimes with a loud battle roar. The dissent and dissatisfaction is slowly becoming a movement hard to ignore.

Feminism just demands equal rights and dignity and slowly women are beginning to realise that if we can't get it, we will fight and demand for it. Women are slowly supporting women and tribing together. We are thriving and sustaining together. We are choosing to choose ourselves first, put our needs above servicing others and that is nothing short of a revolution in the making. The growing unrest and dissent in the society is a testament to the underlying significant effects of women empowerment and the danger these effects on the ongoing patriarchy vs feminism debate. 

So let's thank our god's for giving us an opportunity to fight and celebrate. Let's be grateful that maybe a little, maybe in pockets, women rights are still being acknowledged and celebrated. Let's band together and go to the nearest cafe offering discount on women's day, discuss and plan how more can we help and band together. How well can we create a movement that converts these few scattered whispers into a unanimous roar that shakes the core of all those who undermine and question us. Let's support and uplift fellow women rather than questioning and getting jealous of them. Let's just not make it about one day but about a lifetime of breaking barriers and roles the world forces upon us. Let's be unified, beautiful and strong all the while embrace our feminine strength and grace.

Let's be the voice of change howsoever miniscule or insignificant it sounds, because trust me it isn't....

P.S. Fun fact

International Women's day was declared a national holiday on March 8 in 1922 by Vladimir Lenin in Russia to recognise women's contribution to the 1917 Russian revolution. This bears testimony to the fact that sometimes silent, sometimes loud, women contribute above and beyond doubt.