May be due to being the bread earners or to become successful in winning a bright career. Women have been struggling in India or their rights, gender equality and justice. Women’s day is the way to celebrate feminism as well as develop awareness to build a progressive society. Long years of struggle have paid them that women are able to stand high and think beyond staying in the kitchen. Talents and aggressive desire to become an identity of their family women have made a drastic change relating to livelihood.

Satisfying the requirement of family women are celebrating each day one way or other. Now, women are looking forward to being bread earners also looking beyond their stereotype life. Few are simply exposing their talents though they have all the necessary amenities somewhere they want their identity.

Celebrate feminism or Women’s day

Harbhajan Kaur entrepreneur

Hailing from Chandigarh, 94-year-old Grandmother turns entrepreneur. She excels in cooking and one of her best preparation is “Besan Ki Barfi”. Her preparation is one of her specialities with the tagline “bachpan ki Yaad aayegi”. Handmade sweets selling in the local market at the initial stage on an order basis. She stands as an inspiration to women, as it is never too late to start at any age of life. Now she is one of the top entrepreneurs of India.

Geeta Tandon the stunt person

Woman in stunts is something that is hard to believe. According to the gender bias strength and guts are both things that are bounded to men’s quality. But Geeta Tandon has overtaken the misconception after joining the movie industry as a Stunt woman. She is the bread earner for her family with a son and daughter.

Despite being married she is a single mother with both her kids. Without any support from her family or husband, she is alone leading her family as stuntwomen in Bollywood Industry.

Female outstation Ola Driver Mahalakshmi

Mahalakshmi is the only female Ola driver who travels outstations from Bengaluru. She was a domestic helper at the age of 14 and was able to study till class 10. While working for the family as a maid she learned to drive and became their family driver.

Finally, it was the time when Ola female driver was welcome. Mahalakshmi joined as the Ola partner, being the breadwinner takes care of two children. She is her own boss for the last 5 years, who celebrates feminism or women’s day each and every day of the year.

Celebrate feminism: Bus driver 32 years Karnal

To date, men were seen in the driver seat of the buses. But this village woman of karnal has changed the conception about men can only run buses. Archana at the age of 32 drives a bus in her village, Balla, with her female friend, conductor Sarita. Their interest and commitment towards their job is a new inspiration to the youth of upcoming years.

Applauding those women who have never given up on their countless and restless jobs as housewives. So, women’s day is not enough to cherish the greatness and contribution to society and their people.

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Shave – The idea of womanhood is on the cusp of change and the power of feminism is uprising.

Needless to say, the practise of perpetuating the archaic patriarchal practices has vanished in thin air. Women are always associated with the arbitrary beauty standards and history says that to keep them from the corporal race and being productive at the capitalist setting because women are more motivated than men in professional realms, studies say.

So beauty has been used as a tool to stave off women from participating in the bread-winning business which, sadly the have so far admitted defeat to.

Shaving too, for that matter is associated with the idea of beauty.

A clean shaven body, perfect cleavage and blemish-free complexion makes a woman commensurate for the love-struck eyes. For this, they relentlessly put themselves through painful treatments. But if looked from another perspective, shaving is necessary for hygiene too. So, the question is, does shaving make you any less of a feminist? Some feminists would say yes because thus far, they have fought for entitling the fellow women to have an agency to make a choice.

This is not a pro-self-rule ideology to raise a resistant frontier against patriarchal mindsets.

The idea is rather simple than what meets the eye, driven by our complexities we complicate it needlessly. Feminist theorists should by now stop judging women on the merits of how often they shave and what amount of make-up layers they put on. This will lead us back to idea of patriarchy which only wallows around judging. If we simply see it as a hygiene concern so the maths will be easier.

Besides, like men shave as a daily habit (keeping aside the No shave November idea), shaving is equally necessary for women too, be it their body or private parts. Whilst it becomes an obsession for many a women to seek riddance from every bit of hair from their body, some keep it simple and just stick to the basic routine of monthly shaving or waxing. To tell you, waxing is not a cakewalk, it takes a lot of pain and the bearing the burn of inflammation in the aftermath.

But women having an abhorrence towards men judging misled by patriarchal narrowness is justified.

This is the time and age of web magazines, television perennially invigorating the hairless trend and when a woman has body hair, it is deemed that she becomes undesirable, which is true to some extent. Come on, who doesn’t want attention or to turn heads? Always staying at the receiving end of sympathy is rather frustrating. We should have our autonomy in the question of shaving. But then, the blabbering mouths should be shut up.

Abject surrender to the ideologies too leaves us demotivated or lead us to a dilemma. If someone questions our daily choices, then what we are but slaves? Time feminists understood that the feminine wiles are pathological, forcing someone against it is autocracy and bigotry.

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In a world of unequal opportunities and impermeable glass ceilings, it may be perverse for a lifelong feminist like me to write in defense of men, but twice this week I’ve overheard conversations between women that have frankly disturbed me.

For me, true feminism is a belief in equality even where there’s very little evidence of it.

It shouldn’t be an excuse for man-bashing.

If I may put it modishly, you can cuss your man because he is actually a loser, but don’t dismiss him just because he is the member of male species!

Every other day, I overhear my colleague bemoaning the fact that her husband is “absolutely worse than bloody useless” when he has to look after the children, or spend time with the family, or doing house-hold chores. I happen to know this guy and rather like him. He adores his children, but has the sort of job that demands long hours and a great deal of travel, so he doesn’t spend much time with them. And, no, he’s not much of a cook, but he’s responsible and loving, and frankly doesn’t deserve to be branded useless. If he doesn’t thrive in a domestic setting, it’s because he’s never been there. That’s a function of the aggressive, yes, largely male anti-family work culture that still prevails in our society, but it’s not his fault.

We do hear, read and witness slogans shouting out that men are bas***ds of first grade and they do not know how to treat women other than a sex object!

Well, All of them??

Isn’t this a mindless generalization?

Whatever questions this raises about society’s failure to address the complexities of post-feminist society, it should surely alert us, as women, to the fact that if we demand respect from men, we must also give respect to them. Life ain’t perfect for any of us, but it’s probably not entirely men’s fault. Both men and women are control freaks when in their individual domains!

“You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country” – Emmeline Pankhurst said that in 1913.

Eighty years later…

“You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs” – Catharine MacKinnon, a horrible dictat in 1993.

What’s gone wrong with feminism? 

Feminism used to be about equality, not female superiority and blind male bashing!

Many modern-day feminists engage in man-bashing rather than making dignified demands for equality, as the feminists of the early twentieth century did. So, Robin Morgan unashamedly admits, “I feel that man-hating is an honourable and viable political act”.

The view that many modern feminists seek to spread is that all men are rapists and that’s all they are!!

Well, really??

A Feminist Dictionary goes so far as to define ‘male’ as “a degeneration and deformity of the female”. This is an effort to make men seem inferior, not to elevate the position of women. It starkly contrasts with the goal of feminists of old, which was to make women be viewed as equal, not superior, to men.

The line crossed too grossly!

Feminism Used To Be About Freedom, Not Censorship

Recently, feminists have supported moralistic wars on porn and misogynistic Twitter messages. They are essentially advocating more government intervention into our private lives and our freedom of speech. Yet 43 years ago, Germaine Greer wrote in the The Female Eunuch that “Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it”.

Whereas feminism was once concerned with increasing the freedoms of women, and by extension all inhabitants of society, now it tends towards demanding the reduction of freedoms for opposite species.

Feminism Used To View Women As Self-Sufficient Rather Seeking Protection From One And All 

If recent debates are anything to go by, feminism now seems to be about protecting the delicate, sensitive, victimised female of the human species. For example, we apparently need to be protected from pictures of topless women in Vogue or other fashion magazines, lest these images destroy our self-esteem.

Feminism perpetuates the view that women are fragile. In contrast, the feminists of the early twentieth century were keen to show that they needed little help and could fend for themselves, just like any man. Indeed, as early as 1847, Charlotte Brontë wrote: “Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer.” 

Feminism Used To Be About Structural Change, Not Cultural Change 

The goal of feminists today is to change certain men’s view of women as sexual objects. And that seems all of it. This speaks about a fundamental shift in the focus of feminism, away from demanding structural change – that is, having women in the workplace and represented in government – towards more of a  cultural change by re-engineering certain men’s values and views.

Probably this is a result of the fact that women now have jobs and are represented in government, so inevitably the scope of feminism has become narrower. The economic and political security, we now enjoy has given women the ability to bring feminism to the forefront, but it has also made feminism less appealing. Feminism should not be about getting a job for one woman, or protecting them while walking on the roads, It must be about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie. And sharing it with everyone, including men.

Feminism Used To Be About Making Real Changes, Not Momentary Gestures 

The recent celebrations when our female sports stars such as Saina Nehwal brought us victory are much appreciated. But this is a superficial ‘victory’; it doesn’t indicate any substantial change in the place of women in society. During the Independence Movements in the 1930s the publication of a woman leader’s picture was rarely seen as an achievement, let alone a huge success. Then, women wanted significant change in society – in that instance, female empowerment, not male degradation. Then, women were wanting to stand with men in the fight for freedom, not project themselves as superiors.

Then, women knew the meaning of FEMINISM and the difference with MALE-BASHING!

Feminism, once upon a time wasn’t always as narrow and petty as it is today. It was once about equality for all, true freedom, more choice and radical change, not censorship, man-bashing and the social re-engineering of bad male attitudes.

Gloria Steinem puts it well: “A feminist is anyone who recognises the equality and full humanity of women and men.”

Let’s be true feminists if at all we believe in it!

Being a Female Chaunist is much easier, and equally useless as being a Male Chauvinist!

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