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The month of March is International Women’s Month and in
particular March 8 is officially marked around the world as the
International Women’s Day.
Theoretically, men and women are created equal.
Humanity would not exist without one or the other. The paradigm of
both sexes is the ultimate expression that nature works, or should
work, in harmony. Absent this symbiotic relationship, the world is
bound to fail, if not self-destruct.
While both men and women have their innate
attributes, in the scheme of the Divine creation, neither of them
enjoy the status of a privileged gender. The world needs women
as much as it needs men.
But for many centuries as far as recorded human
history could recall, women were traditionally relegated as a
second-class gender. They were treated as slaves. They were not
accorded equal opportunities in life and their social and political
rights were curtailed. They were the usual object of discrimination
as well as physical and emotional abuse. Until now perhaps, there is
no country in the world that can lay claim that their women are on
equal footing with men in all respect.
A website of the United Nations says that the
majority of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor are women. On
the average, women receive between 30 percent and 40 percent less
pay than men earn for the same work. And everywhere, women continue
to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as
significant causes of disability and death among women of
reproductive age worldwide.
The beginning of this yearly international
observance especially dedicated for women itself was itself the
product of a struggle for political and economic recognition and
emancipation.
March 8, 1857, reports say that women workers in
garment factories in New York City staged a protest to fight against
their low wages and inhumane working conditions that were met with
police attacks and dispersals. In the same month, two years later,
these garment women workers were able organize their first labor
union.
March 8, 1908, another report says that at least
15,000 women marched through New York City demanding for shorter
working hours, better pay, voting rights and an end to child labor.
They adopted the slogan “Bread and Roses,” with bread
symbolizing economic security and roses a better quality of life.
They say that the idea to have a women’s day
that is international in character was initially proposed by a
German socialist, Clara Zetkin, during an international conference
in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1910 of socialist organizations across
the globe to mark the strike of women garment workers in the United
States.
It might still be inappropriate to celebrate
with fondness and merriment this month or day for women because
their struggle lives on in many parts of the world. But it is very
significant to observe the occasion as a constant reminder to all
that women occupy a very lofty position in society. Their struggle
should be every human being’s struggle. Their issues transcend
gender equality. Their issues are all about man’s own inhumanity
to his fellowmen.
Needless to say, procreation takes place because
both sexes exist. The only significant difference is that every
human being is conceived in a woman’s womb. Women thus provide
humanity their first shelter until they are out to confront the
harsh realities of life themselves. If only for this women deserve a
better and fairer treatment in this world.
They deserve it more than any men do.
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