Women’s Day Special Thoughts By Bharati Mahapatra

  Happy women’s day! We need a reminder that women need to be celebrated so we dedicated a day to women. This situation was inevitable the day society crowned patriarchy as the ruling system. Some clever but cunning people made a bunch of rules hundreds of years ago for the society of that period. And we still follow them even though the entire society it was meant for, has transformed. A smart woman is asked to dumb down, a thick woman is asked to weigh down herself and a loud woman is asked to lower her voice down; right from the time, they don’t even understand the way this world works. She’s deprived of her weapons before she goes to war. As said by Virginia Woolf “For most of history anonymous was a woman” proves that women are shoved aside. Nobody listens to them, they need to be heard and respected. She’s taught to respect but asked not to demand respect in return. After all that it’s hard to believe in a time when women and men were equal to each other. Holding equal rights and opportunities, but that time did exist. In the Vedic period in India, the sole purpose of a women’s life wasn’t getting married and breeding children. She was entitled to get as much education as she wanted without being questioned. She decided for herself when to marry and to whom. She had the right to put forward her opinion, cast a vote, own property, and be an equal recipient to the family fortune. Then the patriarchy happened to steal those rights. If patriarchy had a specific beginning in history it can also have an end.  

The same rules and restrictions are repeated to all the women by both men and other women in order to suppress them. Everybody follows it. The very first social institution to enforce this is none other than the family of an individual itself. Within a family, since childhood girls are being told they are not really welcome. It leaves a trauma making girls look down upon themselves. It straight up takes a shot at their self-esteem. At home is where it begins so I and you are where the change shall take place. Today we all must realize that it’s necessary to have not equality but equity between the genders. Women shouldn’t simply be given equal opportunities as men but also equal privileges and resources as they face more obstacles compared to men. Oppressing women is not tradition, it’s a tragedy.