24 hours after Women’s Day
Jetlagged and groggy I write this blog, after reading almost an inbox full of messages on Women’s Day from women and men at work and almost all of them are about sacrifices women make or how they manage work and home and similar.
And some corny ones that say that a woman is like a teabag — you can’t tell how strong she is till you put her in hot water! Or even better, stories about a woman MP riding her Harley to Parliament and depicting some bizarre form of empowerment that gets fuelled only one day in the year.
I am agitated and confused because I am not really sure that celebrating womanhood or anything can be about glorifying an act, gesture or gender.
Genders are not special; people are. Dreams are special and not the gender of the people having them.
Which is why meeting only one woman over a series of leadership meetings in the Sillicon Valley last week does not bother me as much. We will get there soon enough.
Sex and 40
And then my thoughts drag me to an instance at a bar with colleagues a few days back. The colleagues happened to be men and they were happily checking out a bunch of girls across the table when this really hot looking guy walked in.
He was lean, tall and gorgeous and I shifted my chair a lil to check him out and discuss him just the way the guys were discussing the women. And suddenly I had these 5 pairs of eyes staring at me almost in shock.
“Maam how’s your son” asked one of the guys sheepishly, but you are married said another, almost reminding me that my vagina and hormones were under lock and key.
The final blow however came a few days later when I narrated this incident to another woman. Why would you even look at someone “like that” at 40? Why are you risking it? she asked. And boy was I amused at the assessment of gender, risk, age and the importance of availability of men, or to men, all at the same time.
Google Doodle
While we discuss International Women’s day and women at work repeatedly, our biases are still strong — we are good with glorification not parity, we are happy to have colleagues at work for diversity but not willing to give them buddy status and to top the charts — we are happy with differentiation not inclusion.
The Google Doodle 2016 on International woman’s day has an interesting message — #OneDayIWill, where women across countries speak of their dreams — tall, lofty and beautiful. Watch here if you have not seen it already:
One day…
My dreams though are simple and small ….
One day I will be just a buddy at work and argue with colleagues and not go home branded emotional, needy, alpha, bitch, competitive or PMSing.
One day I will have the opportunity to lose, win, learn or stand corrected fearlessly.
One day I will work hard and be appreciated for that and not because I worked hard despite having a home to run.
One day I will check out men without purpose and not be told that as a woman my options are limited at 40
And finally, one day I will write a blog like this one, and not be called a “feminist” in the comments that follow.
Originally published at blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com on March 9, 2016.
