HOW ARE WE GOING TO #BREAKTHEBIAS IN A WORLD WHICH IS SUBMERGED IN GENDER BIAS?!

March has arrived! March, was a month that was named after the Roman god of war, Mars. If you google, you could get to see an endless number of facts like these that describe the beauty of March. But out of everything, the most prominent event that lights up March unlike any other month is “International Women’s Day”.

A day when every organization and media start preparing content around women. Making phrases that describe the phenomenal existence and importance of women, corporates conducts events and provide gifts to glorify women, social media is filled with people celebrating their mothers, daughters, and sisters. The only month when the world places women at the center of the stage…

Well for a matter of fact, women knew that they are just being a part of the show, and play along. We knew that at the very same moment we are celebrated, in every part of the world, thousands of women are being discriminated against, harassed, stripped of their rights, denied their reproductive rights, not given equal pay, being killed, objectified, more and more.

Every year UN comes up with a theme for International Women’s Day. This 2022, they came up with a tagline, “Gender Equality For A Sustainable Future”. Whereas the International Women’s Day association came up with a wonderful hashtag, #breakthebias and the color that is associated with this is “Purple”, which is also known to be a color that represents equality.

Breaking the bias! When I saw that word, the first thought that came into my mind was, “Uh! It is not going to be easy. But we have to.”

It is not easy. We all know. Do you think the scale of gender inequality differs only from country to country, state to state, or culture to culture? The scale of gender inequality differs from house to house and person to person. We witness it every single day. It is quite sad to realize that in many situations even women themselves refuse to stand by women’s side and becomes an agent of the patriarchy.

We are in 2022. Still, we see men despite their age objectify women and talk about them as if they are objects of pleasure. There are times I wished to educate people or at least blow my fist when I hear and see teenagers, men who were married, and men who raise daughters talk rubbish about young women and look at every other woman with lustful eyes and talk about women in a degrading way, which boils my blood. It even makes me worry about the women who live with these men.

I don’t know. What is the point of praying to god and calling yourself righteous if your thoughts are impure and perverted? Oh! I forgot that we live in a world where a lot of movies these days do not even care about showing male leads as jerks, con artists, and perverts.

I agree that to a greater extent we see a whole lot of women being empowered and are making a mark for the struggles of the women from the past. But, there is a whole lot of women and girl children around the world who are double-oppressed. For example, if a woman is born into a poor family. She is discriminated against for being a woman and poor. Not all women’s struggles are same in the diversified world we live in.

Let us say you see a man who is appreciating and respecting his boss who is a woman but then he mistreats a wage worker in the office, who is also a woman. Do you think that’s equality?

Women are weighed and discriminated against everywhere for petty reasons like color, physique, class, age even for a few facial hairs. We even see one woman being compared with another woman physically and dragged down. Let us not ignore the fact that women getting labeled for whatever they do. You are married and not working there are always voices that drag you down. If you are unmarried but career-wise successful, the world creates a new word to label you, instead of “witch” as it doesn’t fit in today’s context and timeline.

In every country, every state, and every home there are different lists made by the patriarchy to put women off. Like I said earlier, a lot of women either take a step back and watch it or either laugh along with men when horrid comments are being made.

I can’t even imagine how much it takes for us to make the world realize that men and women are equal.

According to an article by Chinelo Eze in Guardian Nigeria, women represent 49.58% of the world’s population, and only 8.2% of this number is the representation by women in Fortune 500 CEOs. And the world says, women are stealing men’s jobs.

Let’s not even go to fortune 500 and all. Just take any normal job. Yes, women tend to be smarter during school days. Yes! a lot of women are getting educated, going to college and some even get jobs. But let us not forget that an endless number of women quit their job and gets married off. Yes! Your media doesn’t show that on TV. Just because you didn’t see something like this in a movie and just because you haven’t heard or seen anything like it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I just wrote this post, mainly to let you remind you that it’s not over until every woman is empowered. It is not over until making every man and woman realizes that we are equal. It is not over until the vision of every woman who leads us here gets attained.

This International Women’s Day take a pledge, you don’t even have to publicize it, take it for yourself and remember that we need to educate ourselves, we need to spread awareness about gender equality, fight for women and men, we have to make ourselves stronger physically and mentally so that we are strong enough to protect the cause we are moving forward with. Solidarity is the key to the future we seek. Together we #breakthebias.