The willingness to listen
the patience to understand,
the strength to support,
the heart to care & just to be there
that is the beauty of a lady!
A woman is dynamic in the many roles she plays. She’s a superstar when it comes to fulfilling her duties.
But the question that still lies is not in her ability to demonstrate responsibility; it lies in our ability to reciprocate the same kind of dedication and respect towards her.
Women’s empowerment is very essential for the development of society. But what does ‘empowerment’ really mean? It means individuals acquiring the power to think and act freely, exercise choice and fulfill their potential as full and equal members of society. It is the cultivation of women’s sense of identity, power, recognition and conviction through fostering in women the potential to acquire self-actualization through concrete forces such as education and knowledge.
As a young woman taking her first steps into womanhood, I often find myself struggling in a world made up of conflicting messages about what a woman is, or what she should be. Nowadays women have rights and are treated equally. Though unfortunately, the notions about a woman’s place in society, and her place within her family, are still conflicted. To trace the journey of the average woman is to go from being someone’s daughter, on to being someone’s wife and someone’s mother, and grandmother and so on. A girl is deemed to be more responsible from the very moment she is born into this world and this responsibility, it never ends; it just grows with her, infinites as her roles in life do. They say age is just a number; in this case that is indeed the case, a woman just HAS to be more responsible, more sensible, and oh it never ends.
But let me ask you this are we really genetically programmed to be keeping the cave tidy while the man goes off to hunt? We’re educated women, does housework really matter? Why do we care about it so much? Is it natural instinct or the root of inequality?
Our country has elaborate laws to protect the rights of women. Women and children have figured prominently in the government’s agenda of social reforms and initiatives. But what is it that we keep hearing in the news and reading in the newspapers? It’s how women are being subjugated and subjected to a man’s wishes. We hear of rapes, we hear of dowry, we here of these sins but choose to ignore them, we choose not to stand against them.
In our world, a woman feels safe nowhere, neither on the roads nor her home nor in her own skin. What makes a woman vulnerable to such conditions? Much have been said and done on the external factors that make a woman insecure but we also need to look at the internal battles raging inside a woman, simply because she falls in the social category of being a WOMAN.
A woman is everything. She is sensitive and assertive, she is beautiful and unique. She is God’s creation, just like the man is, and she should never be sat apart or excluded from anything that she wants to do. We should try to create an environment in which she can make decisions and choices individually for a positive social transformation. Building someone’s hope is an achievement that is priceless by all dimensions.
This year, let’s stop. Let us stop turning a blind eye to acts that we know are wrong, to manifestations of customs that have no place in our world and the carrying out of traditions in the name of cultures gone-by. Let’s stop with these expectations. We’d probably all be better off if we stopped levying an iron-clad set of expectations on people just because they’re guys or just because they’re girls. It is true that gender imbalance is alive and thriving but this is high time. Awareness must replace ignorance and education must replace the folklore that keeps an entire gender crushed.
It is true what we say that the idea about what a woman is are changing all the time, but it is important to state that those ideas are changing because women all over the world are making it happen! So this year on International Women’s Day let us resolve to come together and speak for them, until we can give them the strength to begin to speak for themselves for we all have at least one such superstar present in our lives and she deserves to live like one. So let’s start from today and make every day a women’s day for she is much more to celebrate than just today.
“Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.”
– Marilyn Monroe
P.S.: No it wasn’t said by Marilyn Monroe but by Bette Midler.
