Women’s Day
From Last Year. And Added. Dinesh K Kapila
From Last Year. And Added. Dinesh K Kapila
I am going absolutely as it comes on this. What do we mean by Women’s Day. That is stated in the end and was so stated last year. I did post that this year too but it left me unsettled. Honestly. Tell me, when we look at women giving interviews to the audio visual media, we are judging their confidence too. That makes us realise their self confidence and assess the faith and passion they have in what they espouse. While I do not seek to uphold all that is sourced from the Western World as correct and worth emulating, after all there is something called cultural heritage too, but I draw the line at personifying confidence.
What do you perceive when a woman or lady speaks from the typical western mindset. She stands up straight and looks at the camera directly or at the interviewer. The voice comes clear and so does the eye contact. I have spent time on this over the years requesting and advising women to look at me or t the camera or whoever it may be and to make eye contact while speaking. The idea is not to make the uncomfortable but rather that their looking down or elsewhere and then making a point just won’t do. Even while walking I find many women looking down partially, why not look into the distance directly. The women have to evolve and develop the confidence in themselves to demonstrate their level of confidence. I agree that the situation is much improved but we are a nation and society at varying levels of development. Within every social and economic class or community the degree of empowerment varies and varies deeply. We are all on a journey of discovering including of ourselves, participating the women. They perhaps know what they seek but are held back by the backers of status quo and self styled norms. Social order, the threat of chaos, mixing up religion with empowerment are all thrown into the mix of seasoned arguments to oppose the evolution towards empowerment.
We have the example of some quoting from religious texts to justify that empowerment and self confidence are qualities already spoken for and hence so embedded. They forget it’s typical of the mindset we have that to say is to have executed it. Not so. As we are generally not able to execute projects in terms of timelines etc so is there a wide gap between the thoughts and ideals espoused in the religious texts and the actual empowerment. Else our nation would not have required laws on female foetecide.
Minor or rather mini revolutions are occurring across rural and semi urban India but so are the votaries of stubs quo. The opposition will take time to move to a broader level of acceptance of the rights of women. Even in urban India, as urbanisation is a recent phenomenon, the mindset of status quo has ventured in. From the entrenched social mindset most have come from. Even one aberration or incident from one self confident young woman can be latched on to browbeat the vast majority. I met a Professor. A lady at that. Fully convinced that many girls going abroad to study were letting their families down. It took me time to put it through that many were seeking to move on from too many perceived social controls.
By the way we men don’t have it easy to. As ladies evolve and differently, we have to pick up clues, specially in social settings, as to the cultural norms which are acceptable. This could be something as simple as to shake hands or greet with a namaskar ! It can be confusing but that is how any society would evolve. Seriously, men need new cultural norms and ideals because as women are empowered and evolve accordingly do do men need to understand and learn on how to conduct themselves with the more empowered woman.
This takes me to -
If we must celebrate a day for women, let us celebrate freedom from stereotypes, from expectations, from idolisation, from sacrifice...
Stop congratulating women for being the secret behind a successful man... Start saluting them for being successful!
Stop saying the mother is sacred for all the sacrifices she makes...Try to reduce those sacrifices!
Stop telling women they are beautiful... Try telling them it's not important to be beautiful!
Stop praising her roles as mother, wife, daughter, sister...Celebrate her as an individual, a person, independent of relationships.
Stop justifying her necessity to multi task.... Give her a chance not to!
Stop these constructs which are aimed at making her strive for an impossible balance... Let her be inadequate and happy!
Stop making her look at herself through a conveniently male viewpoint. Let her be imperfect, whimsical, irresponsible, boorish, lazy, fierce, opinionated, loud, flabby, ungroomed, adventurous, unpredictable, unprepared, impractical...
Be bold, be happy, be free, be You!
Happy Women's Day!
And one more -
Women’s Day
Empower Women,
Empower our Nation.
Unleash their potential,
Scale up the nation.
Freedom of choices,
Myriad channels of growth.
Economic Freedom
Absolutely
Political Freedom
Absolutely
Personal Choices Freedom
Absolutely
Educational Freedom
Absolutely
Freedom of Thought
Absolutely.
Self Confidence
Absolutely
Think about it
Absolutely
PS Allow me to add that a well groomed self confident lady is truly empowered. No excuse on time and being busy can justify being dowdy, shabbily dressed and ill groomed. Don’t dress to please others but yourself but also be correct and well groomed about it. It adds to the personality. Really. Honestly.
What do you perceive when a woman or lady speaks from the typical western mindset. She stands up straight and looks at the camera directly or at the interviewer. The voice comes clear and so does the eye contact. I have spent time on this over the years requesting and advising women to look at me or t the camera or whoever it may be and to make eye contact while speaking. The idea is not to make the uncomfortable but rather that their looking down or elsewhere and then making a point just won’t do. Even while walking I find many women looking down partially, why not look into the distance directly. The women have to evolve and develop the confidence in themselves to demonstrate their level of confidence. I agree that the situation is much improved but we are a nation and society at varying levels of development. Within every social and economic class or community the degree of empowerment varies and varies deeply. We are all on a journey of discovering including of ourselves, participating the women. They perhaps know what they seek but are held back by the backers of status quo and self styled norms. Social order, the threat of chaos, mixing up religion with empowerment are all thrown into the mix of seasoned arguments to oppose the evolution towards empowerment.
We have the example of some quoting from religious texts to justify that empowerment and self confidence are qualities already spoken for and hence so embedded. They forget it’s typical of the mindset we have that to say is to have executed it. Not so. As we are generally not able to execute projects in terms of timelines etc so is there a wide gap between the thoughts and ideals espoused in the religious texts and the actual empowerment. Else our nation would not have required laws on female foetecide.
Minor or rather mini revolutions are occurring across rural and semi urban India but so are the votaries of stubs quo. The opposition will take time to move to a broader level of acceptance of the rights of women. Even in urban India, as urbanisation is a recent phenomenon, the mindset of status quo has ventured in. From the entrenched social mindset most have come from. Even one aberration or incident from one self confident young woman can be latched on to browbeat the vast majority. I met a Professor. A lady at that. Fully convinced that many girls going abroad to study were letting their families down. It took me time to put it through that many were seeking to move on from too many perceived social controls.
By the way we men don’t have it easy to. As ladies evolve and differently, we have to pick up clues, specially in social settings, as to the cultural norms which are acceptable. This could be something as simple as to shake hands or greet with a namaskar ! It can be confusing but that is how any society would evolve. Seriously, men need new cultural norms and ideals because as women are empowered and evolve accordingly do do men need to understand and learn on how to conduct themselves with the more empowered woman.
This takes me to -
If we must celebrate a day for women, let us celebrate freedom from stereotypes, from expectations, from idolisation, from sacrifice...
Stop congratulating women for being the secret behind a successful man... Start saluting them for being successful!
Stop saying the mother is sacred for all the sacrifices she makes...Try to reduce those sacrifices!
Stop telling women they are beautiful... Try telling them it's not important to be beautiful!
Stop praising her roles as mother, wife, daughter, sister...Celebrate her as an individual, a person, independent of relationships.
Stop justifying her necessity to multi task.... Give her a chance not to!
Stop these constructs which are aimed at making her strive for an impossible balance... Let her be inadequate and happy!
Stop making her look at herself through a conveniently male viewpoint. Let her be imperfect, whimsical, irresponsible, boorish, lazy, fierce, opinionated, loud, flabby, ungroomed, adventurous, unpredictable, unprepared, impractical...
Be bold, be happy, be free, be You!
Happy Women's Day!
And one more -
Women’s Day
Empower Women,
Empower our Nation.
Unleash their potential,
Scale up the nation.
Freedom of choices,
Myriad channels of growth.
Economic Freedom
Absolutely
Political Freedom
Absolutely
Personal Choices Freedom
Absolutely
Educational Freedom
Absolutely
Freedom of Thought
Absolutely.
Self Confidence
Absolutely
Think about it
Absolutely
PS Allow me to add that a well groomed self confident lady is truly empowered. No excuse on time and being busy can justify being dowdy, shabbily dressed and ill groomed. Don’t dress to please others but yourself but also be correct and well groomed about it. It adds to the personality. Really. Honestly.
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