8th march 2011. commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first Women's Day celebration and also celebrating women all over the world today. Another important day joined the pages of history. What did we make of it? Apart from sending a few text messages which gave the telecom industries and other communication business houses a boost in their income, what have we done to realize the original cause of the Women's Day celebration-the cause which tells us to press for various demands made by women, to bring about a change in the status of women, to work for women-rights.
I guess the answer is clear. We live in a world of polarities, the two poles being one of the privileged, educated, loved and care-for section of women, and the other section deprived of all these. One section who become the president of the world's largest democracy and the other section which is forced to trade their bodies for livelihood. Take India this year as an example. At one level, to mark Women's Day, Air India, for the second consecutive year, operated on Monday night an ultra long haul flight from Delhi to Toronto, with an all-woman crew. On the other hand, a survey by ICRW topped Indian men as most indulgent in sex-violence and in most of these cases, women are suppressed and the matter never sees light.
What an ideal Women's Day would be is when thee latter extremity (of the two poles mentioned) joins the former section and when the man-woman or society-woman relationship would cease to be that of a convict-victim, and when "woman" will cease to be seen as just a derivative of "man".
