Women’s Day Is Not The Women’s Way

Thought Leadership for Reflection: I find the concept of celebrating a woman's day to be very condescending and conflicting because it is like claiming that women need to earn their place in the sun to be equal to men. I find it superficial like the corrupt claim of gentlemen who say they respect women but do not think that way.

There is an old saying you teach a man you teach an individual, you teach a woman you teach a nation. A woman is a whole circle. Within her is the continuous energy create, nurture, enlighten, awaken and transform because a woman can change the world by simply changing her children who she teaches. And yet, man who does not have this energy has never understood the energy and power of the woman.

Whenever there are crimes against women I have noticed that most men who are armchair activists will come out on social media and ask for punishment for the perpetrators. And yet these men who are so called men who respect women have never understood that respect for women is not about pulling chairs or opening doors or the cunning chivalry they display. Respecting women goes much deeper.

Whenever I speak to my educated family and friends in Goa where I was born or Bombay where I was raised about how we need to teach our men and sons how to respect women, I often get a confutation to save my talk for the rustic men in Punjab, UP, Rajasthan, Haryana or Bihar who need to learn respect. And I am like wow does that mean you respect women? Then I do remind them that you did not share your ancestral property equally with your sister. Why? Because you as the son are the heir and the property is your right. But hey morally and legally she has equal right too! So, who the F@#$ are you to tell her to be happy with what you give her! SHE HAS EQUAL RIGHT! And if you cannot respect your sister sincerely, pray how do you claim you respect all other women be it in office or society.

I have mooted an idea to commence the Ahimsa Army an informal network of women and men in housing colonies across India to address Domestic violence and Marital Rape. A lot of people think domestic violence is about physical abuse only. However, there is far more crippling abuse emotionally, mentally, spiritually and soulfully by the conniving men who like making their wives dependent on them. Men nicely tell their women not to work as they will take care of them. So, women also get comfortable and gladly do not do much with their prowess and acumen to unleash their own potential. This is DOMESTIC VIOLENCE of the WORST KIND. It is dangerous because men steal the independence and empowerment of their wives and make them dependent. And when things go awry in the marriage, the poor woman is at her wits end about what to do with her life going forward. I have seen and noticed this with several women who are much more qualified, talented and disciplined than their men but today they have no standing because they gave it up for their men a while ago and now are so dependent that they know not what to do and how to move forward.

This point was nicely highlighted in a movie called Dil Dhadakne Do produced by Farhan Akhtar (and I am told by his associate Vivek Kaul that he included this scene deliberately to make an impact. Kudos Farhan). In the movie there is scene where Rahul Bose (an Ivy League educated man - that is the character he plays) who is the husband of Priyanka Chopra is having a conversation with some of their friends. And this sophisticated, educated urbane metrosexual say to his friends " For many generations now, working women were not allowed in our family. However, things are changing, I have ALLOWED my wife to work". WOW! What an ass and this ass embodies the feudal mindset of many educated men in India. You can immerse them in Ivy league schools or Poison Ivy but you can get the feudalist, patriarchal mindset out of them. These are dyed in the wool rogues who think that women are meant to be housewives (yes, they do not even know that the right term is homemakers, because they realise not, that it is the woman who makes the home and not these arrogant educated men who would not last a day taking care of home or the children).

As a leadership coach and consultant, I hear this often from men in the corporate world when I ask them what work does your wife do? The answer I often get is "She does not work, she is a housewife". And I say to them do you think you would last a day as a house husband?

These are the same men who have not ALLOWED their women to work, given equal right to their sisters, who then claim to respect women in the workplace and celebrate woman's day.

DO YOU GET MY DRIFT? Do you seriously think these kind of men (and they by far the most) can respect and appreciate the women who work with them?
NO! NO NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! They fake it! They abuse it! They manipulate it! For them the woman is a lesser mortal, she is not capable of what they can do and she is meant to be a housewife or a woman who pleases him when he gets home and they get that same IDIOT ATTITUDE to work every day. That is the truth of MEN in the workplace and businesses, who celebrate woman's day but are far from respecting women.

SO , my simple question to the men is when you do not respect your sisters and wife's freedom to work, WTF is this respect for women and woman's day you celebrate? GROW UP!

Ideas for action:

I was fishing for ideas with my friends and HR professional Vikram from Kony and Marketing Guru Celita who is ex MTV and Star and some thoughts came by.

A message for a mindset change on Women's Day to all the MEN and also their MOTHERs and SISTERS because what goes wrong with any woman will also go wrong with you...If we must celebrate a day for women, let us celebrate freedom from stereotypes and also freedom all this nonsensical JINGOISM promoted by nonsensical people who lack common sense. And like the wise man VOLTAIRE said "Common Sense is very uncommon". So here are some ideas worth working on - 

• Stop congratulating women for being the secret behind a successful man; Start saluting them for their own success. Pray why should any woman be behind a man's success. Women have the competence and more than that the character to go far beyond what men could every achieve. After all they do give birth to a child, the man could not even think of the pain in his wildest dream, leave alone physically withstand it. 

• Stop saying the mother is sacred for all the sacrifices she makes; Try to reduce the need for those sacrifices! 

• Stop telling women just they they are beautiful also tell them they are brilliant, intelligent and wise and beautiful in mind, body, heart, spirit and soul. Try telling them it's not important to be just beautiful with skin deep beauty.

• 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; Try to make her life easy.

• Stop making her strive for an impossible balance; Just let her be the way she is ... and be happy!

• And most of all at the work place treat her with fairness, do not patronize.

Treat her as an equal not someone below you. Give her due based on merit and do not ignore her to promote your male buddy. Just because she works shoulder to shoulder with me, let us not think she is available and make passes and snide sexist remarks. Do not patronize her, remember she carried men like you and me for 9 months, gave birth to us, nurtured us, groomed us, taught us and made us whoever we are today. So be respectful of that. And last but not the least never forget whatever the men can do, she can do as well or maybe much better. Let's grow up boys and become gentlemen who truly and inherently respect women.