What plans for women's Day?

As it happens at this time of the year, at InnerSight we often find ourselves facilitating discussions on a number of topics related especially to women in the work place, in the context of organisations celebrating Women's Day. 

Last year, a company in Bangalore had made big plans for the day. They had planned a fashion show, a cookery contest, special shopping festivals and many other events over  a three day period around Women's Day to really celebrate the day in a big way. We were a part of the event with a small workshop for interested participants to discuss gender roles, prejudices and perceptions in the work place. Given the rest of the plans, it was interesting to note how much the group talked about the selection of events to mark womanhood - cooking, clothes and shopping. Some of the women were livid at the typecasting, while others were talking of it just being for fun. The few men in the workshop, quite tactfully, kept mum!

It left me thinking then, and I am reminded of it again now, as to how deeply gender roles are engrained in our collective psyche, and how much of a struggle it is to break out of those roles to reinvent roles in relationships. Even now, the idea that cooking, cleaning, child-care and home affairs are in the women's domain is so deeply engrained, that for many working women, it feels like they are in two full-time jobs all the time. Some people, of course, feel they are making these choices themselves as free and empowered people - they want to do it all, and yet, when you scratch that surface, there usually are deep-rooted messages on what it means for them to be a 'good' person, and the costs they are paying, be it exhaustion, emotional and physical, resentments, anxiety and more become quite evident.

We don't have to dig far to see where it comes from. Our ads, movies and TV shows do a great job of reflecting the glorification of the working woman who slaves away at home as well - the villainous women are often the ones who are working outside but not at home, and the virtuous women are the ones who do everything.

Our new heroes are then the Super Woman who can do it all, and all that with a perfect smile while looking like she stepped out of a magazine cover.

A few months back, on Mother's Day, we wrote this. Today, as we approach International Women's Day, we are asking the same questions again, in a larger gender context: "Should we really be celebrating the 'super-woman' status? Can we look at the pressures and stresses that women go through, and actually make it easier?" (paraphrased). This International Women's Day, as we celebrate womanhood, let's also pause to ask ourselves what are we celebrating, and what could possibly change about it.

And have things changed at the organization we started this post with? This year, we hear they have fashion shows, cookery contests, a sack race through the office corridor, a hackathon - and all events are open for all genders :)

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