Celebrate Women! Celebrate Life!

Domestic helps from Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum

Waking up early, their tired bodies hurry to the kitchen to begin what is going to be yet another busy day. Right from cooking, cleaning, babysitting and performing other household chores, these young girls in their twenties virtually manage an entire household. For Pratima, Olive and Sulochana this is just part of their daily routine. They form part of a huge band of girls who try to eke out a living by working as domestic helps in Delhi.

Armed with a keen desire to better their living conditions, hundreds of these girls migrate every year from faraway places like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal and travel to the city of their dreams, Delhi. All they seek is some economic prosperity for themselves and their families at home. All they get is a little money. What they receive in even greater abundance is delayed salaries, poor living conditions, physical and even sexual assault. Sadly, such injustice is not uncommon for a large section of women in India.

Every year, March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day. While this Day is meant to remember the long struggle of women for their social, economic and political rights, it also strives to remember “ordinary women” who have come a long way to shape society.

In today’s contexts of “development”, one might be led to believe that women have indeed come of age and have challenged men in their own traditional male bastions. Yet, one is left asking: do we need to continue celebrating International Women’s Day? Is it that women are to be remembered only on this day and forgotten the very next day?

Talk of celebrating International Women’s Day and we usually find the Sonia Gandhis, the Aishwarya Rai Bachchans, Sania Mirzas and women celebrities of their ilk take prominence. The ordinary woman who routinely prepares the dal chawal for her family is left to the confines of her smoke-infested kitchen. True, women celebrities need to be celebrated for having brought womanhood into prominence but not at the expense of the woman who silently weaves society’s fabric together. It is these small women who contribute to society’s progress in a big way that needs to be celebrated. Women still continue to be small people, but they do have big stories to tell. And listen, wouldn’t we?

What probably needs special attention is how we have used language to shape the identity of women. Words like the other sex, weaker sex, fairer sex or better half either objectify or demean women. Labelling theory (social reaction theory), as propounded by sociologist Howard Becker, tells us how the use of negative language in the form of labels influences the behavioural patterns of the ones who are labelled. Such a labelling leads to a stereotyping and ultimately to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Calling a woman “weak” would ultimately lead her to believe that she is weak. Children who are labelled in their childhood are good examples of such self-fulfilling prophecies. So how do you intend to prophecy for the women you love?

Celebrate Women! Celebrate Life!

Far from making International Women’s Day an apology for one’s deeds of omission or commission — far less an eulogy — we need to celebrate the extraordinariness of ordinary women. It is in womanhood, right from the womb to the tomb, that the cycle of life keeps going on and on… It is in mankind’s own interest to celebrate womanhood. It is in humankind’s own interest to celebrate life!