Celebrating International Women’s Day

MUJ Litmus Club students organized a small event on March 8, to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). The event was well-managed and quite creatively done. Representatives from an NGO ‘PRIA’ from Delhi also participated and emphasized on the need for women empowerment and safety. A skit, a poem and a video were shown, on the theme of IWD 2016, which was ‘Pledge for Parity’. So far so good!

But my question to all concerned and to women in particular is, why should women celebrate a Women’s Day at all? What is the need to highlight the achievements of women alone? Women have been breaking glass ceilings in almost all erstwhile male-dominated areas, be it journalism, acting, mountaineering, driving, piloting aircraft, going into space, sports, etc., so much so that, in the words of UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon, ‘we have created a carpet of shards’ by now! Today the extraordinary achievements of ordinary women are as common place as those of ordinary men.

Isn’t it time then, to treat women in the same category as men? Or will we have to wait for another 117 years, as predicted by some experts, for women to ultimately gain parity with men, which, it is being said, will happen only in the year 2133?