Celebrating International Women’s Day, quotas and job circulars exclusively promoted female participation, necessitating female participation in every international school competition.
Female. Female. Female.
Haven’t we achieved enough already? Why do we still have to fight crying about feminism or rights for females? Why do we still complain? Wherever you go, these discussions are on at every workplace, institution or gathering. Sadly, it is not only men who are complaining, but sometimes even women themselves forget the pain of being passed over and complain, receiving everything they wanted. There’s no blame here, we all fall short of our targets from time to time and forget, what it really means to fight for rights and to fight for a community.
If we are expected to blindly accept years of discrimination and take whatever is at hand, then why would we need feminism? However, if we look beyond all the successes of feminist movements and struggle, we’ll see there is still so much to be done and to be ashamed of. We forget to look around and empathize with women who suffer, who are still victims. Feminism is not only about empowering certain groups of females and leaving out the rest, but it is also about standing as one united force and ensuring that all our sisters, daughters and mothers are treated right and given what they deserve.
While on billboards and advertisements we see equality, some wife out there is still domestically abused; far away from those billboards. Most daughters are still being restricted from stepping outside their homes to attain education. Mothers are still treated as though they were born to take care of household chores and that is their only purpose in life.
The career-oriented woman is still shamed for being ambitious and still patronised about her capabilities. Yet, we still see equality in front of our eyes and believe our job here as a feminist is done.
If we think the world we live in is treating us fine today, there is no assurance it will treat our daughters right unless we ensure that every single woman in this era is empowered and can fight for herself.
Why does one assume that a woman who chooses to be a housewife or a full-time mother is not as valuable and does not deserve the same respect? If they chose to do so, they rather deserve all the respect that we can give them. After all, these women nurture our society and build up the future generation. I’m not saying males don’t do that, they do their best as well these days and that is a step forward but that is not all. While we applaud for the fathers who spend time with their children, we forget to give simple words of appraisal to the mother. Why? Only because we believe it is the inherent job of a woman to do so. And you still say we have achieved enough equality?
What about the woman forced to live behind closed doors physically abused every day? Why do we choose to keep her out of this fight for equality? Do we forget that she didn’t choose this life for her, that she is a woman treated in a wrong and unequal manner? Would you still say we have achieved equality? We see success stories and proud women and thank God we see them, or else we’d have no glimpse of hope by now, but we also have stories of women who are still sexually harassed in workplaces or worse, in their own homes.
We are progressing, becoming more vocal about the injustice faced by us, or our peers, coming out with our stories and fighting together with movements like #metoo. There’s a lot more to be done because there is way more suffering beyond what we can see. If we look around our country and our neighbouring countries we see enough reasons to believe that the world, as sad as it is, is not equal as of yet. When we look beyond, we will see that it is nowhere close to becoming equal either. Women in the Middle East are still treated as property of men. They are forbidden to do anything, including making their own life decisions without the supervision of a man.
While all of these injustices still persist, can we really dare to say that we have achieved a world of equality?
I applaud the progress achieved through feminism, but I believe it must go further. It has to grow to a point where women are treated equally in the workplaces, in their homes and anywhere on street. I believe feminism has to keep growing until all the women in this world can stand alone and fight for themselves, ‘cause if we stop before that, there is no assurance that the world will not revert to the days of abuse and we will not lose our voices again.

Sanjida Tanny is the founder of Contentier (more known as The Raconteuse/Storyteller) and a passionate art curator