The international women?s day celebrated every year on March 9 reminds us of the gap between the genders and a major reason for this is the broken promises of men
who only give lip service to this ideal.
Change is essential so that the next generation can thrive and do what they want to do at every
level based on their ability and irrespective of their gender. For the longest of time women have been fighting for equal representation across several fields. Despite this tedious journey that
all women have undertaken, the process continues as they are still not seen equal to their
male counterparts.
62 million girls are still denied education across the globe. Girls are conditioned to expect less of themselves than boys, and doing better than their male peers at school does not translate into future rewards – women still earn up to 22 per cent less than men in most countries in the world.
Women with full-time jobs earn only about 77% of their male counterpart. Only 4.8% CEO positions in the S&P 500 companies are held by women. Such inequalities in gender lead to tremendous waste of talents and missed opportunities for everyone and all of us humans are at a loss here.
However emphasising on the darker side of this idea will be an injustice to all the individuals who have devoted there time and lives to ensure equal opportunities for women in our society. Though slowly put over the past decades we have made some groundbreaking progress in the equality scenario since now: In the past 2 decades, the rate of women childbirth death has
decreased by a whopping 40%. Today 4 out of 5 constitutions have some kind of mechanism to
guarantee gender equality.
By 2013, 76/100 countries passed legislation outlawing domestic violence up from 13/100 in 1995. Since 1990, the number of women has quadrupled in parliament in the middle east and in North Africa, gender gaps in access to education have narrowed.
There are certain rules that we all can follow in order to increase gender equality in our daily lives and make it a better-empowered world for all. Prospects will not improve unless boys and men join the fight for equality, change their mindsets and become more involved in family life.
Gender equality is often framed as a responsibility of women, and that they ought to be more outspoken or assertive to climb the career ladder, but men too benefit from a more egalitarian society. Gender inequality doesn’t only lead to violence – it restricts individual expression, contributes to economic inequality, and limits men and women’s role in their households and communities, among others. The harms of pressures to conform seem fairly obvious. Everyone should be free to behave in ways that feel comfortable without the threat of violence. By reforming traditional ideas about gender, we can start to move away from real or implied threats of violence, and leave more than just overt gender-based violence behind.
We must educate to promote equality from nursery school, the campaign to engage men and boys in challenging discrimination, and legislate to promote equal opportunities
Challenge misogyny & Speak up without hesitation whenever one witnesses sexism around.
Employment policies that support family life and promote gender equality would enable all workers, including men, to better juggle work and care.
Gender equality is not a pipe dream. But for it to be a reality, men need to recognise how gender inequality creates unfair, narrow and even toxic versions of themselves and their roles in society; and they need to see it equally as their responsibility, too.