IS WOMEN’S DAY GETTING CELEBRATED AS AN ACCOUNT OF SUCCESS?

This article is a research material, which i under took during my PG studies with facts and figures and a small critic from my point of view.... Feminism, women folk, equality of women sect, reservations for women in jobs, educating girls… these are the hot sold commodities on the day of March 8th, as it is international women’s day. All the women resource centers, conference halls, schools and colleges are busy in celebrating the day with hot discussions and seminars. But, is the day really getting completeness? Here is an overview of the development of women thinking in the Indian context. Feminism is questioning the age-old beliefs that were fundamental to the prevailing social structure. In doing so it is raising the consciousness of the society. In India Feminism is somewhere in between the second and third wave. It is confronting the sexual stereotyping of woman in text books, unequal pay for equal work, prevalence of the belief in the traditional division of labor and the tendency to prefer a boy-child and of considering man to be a breadwinner and the woman’s earning as an extra. Feminism as a philosophy aims at profound changes in the traditional social structure, in attitudes and personal relationships to usher in a truly just social order. India is the country, where women are considered to be worshipped as an angel than calling the sect as equals. In India, the land itself is considered as “motherland”, where the surviving land, which is giving shelter, is compared with “the mother’s womb”. Indian notions are most commonly based on mythologies, Vedas, Upanishads and old epics. The culture itself is emerged through these notions, which are being followed since many more centuries and being continued by generations. Though Indian land is called as “motherland”, the society can boldly call as patriarchal. The reference of patriarchal dominations goes back to the time of the great epic “manusmruthi”. The epic speaks about the women life that “a girl should be looked after by her father in the childhood, husband in the youth and son in her old age”. It also speaks about man’s lifetime which is highly independent and women’s life as dependent on man. It speaks of a clear cut difference between man and woman’s lifetime by intentionally making woman as “Others” because of their biological difference of maternity. The Vedas and Upanishads how ever gave importance of women scholars because of their intelligence, but these epics also say about women that “ETHRA NARYANTHO PUJYANTHE TATRA DEVATHA UPASTHITHAHA”, which means “where woman is worshiped, there exists the god”. These Vedas also do not consider women as equals, but as angels or goddesses, who should be worshipped than to be treated as living beings. The Indian mentality consider the women sect as creatures living inside the four walls of a house, who should be engaged in kitchen work activities and household works as told by Virginia woolf as “angel kept in the house”. The works of livelihood is also differentiated between the men and women in India than it is for survival question. Some works of heavy physical activities and powerful posts always lies in the hands of man, whereas the creative and emotional activities and household affairs are told as womanly jobs. Usually, the posts which are used to attract huge number of consumers are usually managed by the women, where women are used as showcase puppets to create attraction among men folk. As the modernization entered Indian realm, the culture also started changing, where the situation of women folk also changed but with the latest version of patriarchal domination. Women left the houses with good educational qualifications but are stereotyped for the attracting jobs like receptionists, PRO’s, telephone operators, customer care executives, air hostess whose responsibility is to establish mutual relations between the company and the customers by using their beauty as weapons than their education. All men-consumable commodities are generally propagated and advertised by women models, where women sect is depicted as the symbols of vanity and lavishness who can be attracted by simply using of some commodities. The women are also usually appointed as assistants than appointing them as officers. Though they reach such positions, the men are still in an opinion that, they should not be an inferior in front of mere women superiority. There are many feminist thinkers who are constantly propagating the feministic ideologies through their literary pieces, in a way these literary figures and works are also fighting as a weapon against patriarchal domination and emphasizes the condition of women in the current scenario. But both the feminists and other thinkers must understand that the women’s day is not celebrated to gain superiority for women over men but to establish an equality over the two sects, who are like the wheels of the same chariot of social set up.