Women’s day – a reminder, a way forward?

Original post by Salwa Michel @mixreading.com

Women’s day is a celebration that we see once every year to commemorate the achievements that women have made either in recent history, is ongoing, or in the past. That is partly as an endeavor to encourage others to follow these steps or an acknowledgment as to what a woman can do.

Why is that?

Why do we have to reiterate and remind ourselves as well as the upcoming generation of young women and girls as to what exactly they are capable of doing?

Or

Is it the other way around? – we are telling those who are not aware of what a woman can do or those who refuse to allow a woman to take her chances either in education, in a career, or even just to give her voice in the society in which she lives.

It is hard to believe that while we celebrate Mother’s Day, women’s day, and others –

· Some are fighting to be allowed to go to school, and they fight their closest and dearest just to be above illiteracy.

· Some women are just fighting to be left alone and not forced into a marriage that they did not choose.

· Sadly, a regular occurrence all over the world are those little girls who are married off by their families long before she even knows what it means to be a woman.

· Girls forced to leave their education just because she has come into puberty and should not be allowed out.

· Female circumcision – unbelievably, in the third millennium, girls suffer through an operation that, more often than not, leaves her mutilated and not even able to be a woman any longer. She counts herself lucky if she is almost normal afterward.

The issues of inequality are endless, so perhaps Women’s Day is a reminder to solve these issues. Or, at least not to make any celebrations or yearly commemorations but to let our girls – be it daughter, sister, or colleague – to take her chances and achieve success in a career just as her male counterpart is doing all the time.

Now, and as far back as history has registered, we see successful women – they had to fight to get where they finally did.