Mar 9, 2020
Stop Celebrating Women’s Day
According to the theory of Human Evolution, when we became Homo-Sapiens, we developed modern tools, created art, developed powerful thinking and yet we were living in groups for the purposes of survival. We were still hunter-gatherers and eventually, women were given the role of protecting and nurturing their families.
According to Charles Darwin, evolution made women’s bodies prone to diseases and injuries more than men, which led men to take precedence over women for gathering food and shelter for the family. Also, it was believed that women had low intellectual powers due to evolution. (See, how the so-called ‘Father of Evolution’ was playing a pivotal role in creating gender inequality!)
Reference — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780375/
After 5000 B.C., we started using coins made out of metal as currency to evaluate the work done by a person which became the root cause of the giant named ‘inequality’.
After various continents got divided and different societies with their set of rules were formed, some cultures followed orthodox behaviour and felt that women should be homemakers and their male counterparts were superior physically as well as mentally. It became the responsibility of men to earn bread and butter for the family. While others opted a fresh approach of letting women work to pay their daily needs of food and shelter. One such culture was the ‘United States of America’. But, the pay ratio of Men to Women was not 1:1 at that point of time even though both had similar work to do. (Can we imagine, a country which itself is an amalgamation of various cultures and civilizations, delineation of freedom and supporting liberal values and thoughts, still wasn’t adaptive to equal pay and a right to vote for women!)
In 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter working hours, better pay and the right to vote. It was the Socialist Party of America who declared the first National Woman’s Day, a year later.
The idea to make the day international came from a woman called Clara Zetkin. She suggested the idea in 1910 at an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. There were 100 women there, from 17 countries, and they agreed on her suggestion unanimously.
Reference — https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51666668
Even after 109 years of the celebration of women’s day, we haven’t been able to provide a safe and secure environment for women. They are still considered as second-hand citizens and never given a chance to be in the driving seat! If a woman chooses to focus on her career and never finds an urge to have a partner, she is not considered a good person and the society still objectifies her. In 2020, we still tell people that, “We’ve given a lot of freedom to our sisters, mothers, wives, daughters. We have allowed them to choose whatever they want. We are quite progressive and we believe in gender equality.”
The fact of the matter is if we say we have ‘given freedom’ or we’ve ‘allowed’ someone to do something on their own means we are still driving their car and just taking turns according to their wants and desires. We are still not letting them drive on their own. Women get objectified on every step in their lives, whether it is about wearing clothes, working as a CEO of a company, being a homemaker, or entering into politics to serve the nation! We still laugh casually on their ability to achieve anything while being a mother, and a wife without considering the impact on the other half of humanity.
In reality, we are still unable to digest the fact that they can do all the things seamlessly without men being in the driving seat. We still get uncomfortable to be on the backseat of the bike a woman drives! Women’s day is not about celebrating womanhood for a day and get away with it after that! It’s about truly believing that someone else from the opposite gender can do the same or better job than men. All women need is support, care and the belief that they can land on the moon, run a company, be the president of a country, or be a homemaker and make their children better citizens. The day we, as a society collectively start taking the initiative of letting women be the leaders, we will never need to celebrate a day and every day will be the same.
To Be Continued…..
If you want to read my other write-ups then go to
- My write-up on misconceptions of Humbleness — “An Eternal Struggle of Staying Humble” by Jainish Soni https://link.medium.com/lF8fW0UmI4
- The fabricated idea of the word ‘Perfection’ — “The Idea of Perfection is Fabricated” by Jainish Soni https://link.medium.com/88T2XlbnI4
