It's beyond the MALE Gender

“International Women’s Day is our opportunity to reflect as women on how far we have come and what more we need to do to make sure women everywhere have the opportunity to write their own story.  Changing the world, like living your own life well, requires a sense of purpose, the courage to pursue it and the preparedness to risk the most public of failures. Nothing big was ever achieved by cowering.” 

             – Hon. Julia Gillard, 27th Prime Minister of Australia.

Madam Julia Gillard generously shared these words on the eve of International Women’s Day on 7^th March 2013 at Canberra in Australia. She wanted to communicate the message of empowerment of women on a day on which much more needs to be done than to just say that men and women are alike. As Australia’s first female Prime Minister and a law student, Julia believed that she had much more in her bags than just documents or few copies of affidavits. She had a dream to courageously spread the message across the world that women at every stage are as strong and resilient as men. She is one who stepped out of her comfort zone many times, which made her a role model. But, the sad part of the story is that there aren’t many successors to Julia. There aren’t many women to sit at the decision making tables.  

With women occupying just 17% Fortune 500 board seats, only 19% of parliament seats worldwide, earning less than 10% of world’s income and forming only 22% of the workforce across the world, the gender gap is still far too broad. Women start careers in business and other professions with the same level of intelligence, education, dedication and commitment as men. Yet comparatively few reach the top echelons. There’s been a lot of talk in the past about why more women don’t become leaders and what our society needs to change to produce more female leaders.

It’s a fact that if we account the amount of work women do at their homes, our economy will triple. The world has been successful in developing women leaders who lead a team as big as 10,000 or more workforce. We must appreciate them because they are the ones who took a brave decision to deal with their life in somewhat different way than others of their breed. But the number of these women is very less.

I have always considered ‘women’ as those creations of God, who are bravest at heart to love, strongest enough to rejoice and wisest enough to understand.

To bring a change, we need to change to change the mindset. We can achieve this through enlightenment and education. We need to design our curriculum and workplace in such a way that it should not discriminate against women, rather it should welcome them. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, let us appreciate the efforts of Women on humanity and pledge to make this world a harmonious place for them to live.