Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow

Women’s equality day. This day comes every year. And for this occasion, people always conduct
competitions, invite successful women as chief guests for the day, and write poems and songs
praising women and all their works, greetings and thank-you messages will be flooding over the
social media chat boxes and posts. And after 24 hours, the same person who was invited to be chief
guest will be returning to work to face the same discrimination as the day before. The Dignitary
who conducted such an event would be asking his wife to quit his job to take care of his kids. And it
is like a ritual done every year. It will be repeated next year too. There won’t be any change in the
life of that woman. Everything in our world has exceptions. Most of the successful women who
break those barriers are such exceptions.

We all watch sports, right? Let’s take the FIFA world cup. The prize money given to women players
is less than for male players. Why? They play the same game. If you say women have less stamina,
yes! Agreed. But women are competing with women, who have the same average stamina. So, a
man who can run twice as fast as a woman will be participating with another man. Likewise for
women. They are competing with their level partner and their efforts are the same. So, they should
be given the same prize money, right? Then why not? A friend of mine said men are good at
teaching, and that’s why we have more male teachers in an online teaching platform. But in our
schools, we have more female teachers, right? How can one say that this job is for men and this is
for women? This is where all the problem starts, giving genders to jobs. Cleaning should be done
by women. Taking care of children is a woman’s job. Business is a man’s job. Construction and
architecture are man’s jobs. You might find it difficult to believe that I included architecture, we
have many architecture female students but only 26% of them go to work. As I said there might be a
few exceptions with examples, but not equality. And in construction sites, the daily wage of a man
is Rs.800 and a woman is Rs.600. Both of them work in the hot sun for 8 hours. They say women
are weak and use this as an excuse for the difference in the wage. A few days ago, I asked my
mother if a girl can stay with her parents after marriage. She said, “No, she can’t, she should be
with the husband’s family, she can’t be with her parents, it will be no longer her home.” I asked her
“But, a boy can stay with his parents, even after marriage right?” And she replied “Yes!”. So, the
house a girl lived so far becomes just another hostel, and the family she has loved so far will
become wardens, once married, it is like the course has been over and is no longer needed. And if a
boy wishes to stay with his parents, it’s alright, but if a girl does the same, society will shame the
family. It tells us the love between Parents and Children is also gender-based.

All these issues start at home. “You are a girl, don’t laugh loud.” “You are a girl, so sit properly.”
“You are a girl, so make tea for your brother.” “You are a girl, don’t talk back.” And to the boys,
“ You are a boy, don’t cry like a girl.” A man has the same lacrimal apparatus as a woman. So, why
shouldn’t he cry? “You are a boy, don’t be a coward like a girl”. A boy can go to gym, but a girl
cannot, she can workout at home. A boy can study abroad, but a girl has to take up the course
offered by the local institution. And these are all started by the lady of the house, the mother. The
root cause of gender discrimination might have been a guy in the past, but the carrier is the women
of the society. My brother asked my mother to buy a pencil pouch, and even though a pink pouch
was of good quality, she picked up a low-quality blue pouch. We have given genders to even
colours. If a girl cuts her hair short, she is labbled as a tomboy. When a guy grows his hair long, he
must pay a fine for being unkempt. Even one of my teachers was a victim of such an issue. For both
males and females, the anatomy of a hair follicle is the same. Why is a guy forced to trim his hair
and pay every month just because someone sets such a rule? He must be happy because he is not a
victim of male pattern baldness. I read a news article about the mutilation of female sex organs
recently. A mother has mutilated her daughter’s genitalia so that she will remain a virgin. Now the
question arises here. Will the mother mutilate her son’s genitalia for the same reason? Instead of
undergoing such pain, she could have died as a foetus, right?

We can’t change everyone, but we can change us, right? Our future is in our hands. Instead of
creating this world to be gender-based, we should turn it into a humanity-based heaven for the
upcoming generations. Let’s take a hundred more gender equality days to change our world. Let us
be that change. Like mentioned at the beginning, there will always be exceptions. From now let us
change those exceptions into a trend. Jai hind!