Somewhere in the world a girl is born as you read this. You’re probably a girl or a woman too. While International Organisations and Social Media is posting about how we need to address the issue of the suppression of the girl child globally and make this place more accepting of women and their voices, I’m sitting wondering that in this vast existence of humanity why on Earth are we still try to “address” it.
Does society really need to be sensitised even now? How much more “addressing” will it take to accept the female voice and existence as an essential part of being?
When I was born, I remember my aunt tell me how my paternal grandmother cringed when she heard I was a girl and refused to go see my mother in the ward. My father often uses phrases like “don’t do this, you won’t be able to”. My brothers were often given an extra dollop of ghee for lunch and not me or my sisters. One of my brothers and become a mush of ghee today – absolutely lazy, pampered and useless, not to mention the inability to do anything worthwhile.
I ask you through this piece dear reader, why do you need a day to come the realisation and acceptance that God created two beings in equal measure and potential. Why then is it that centuries later, there is a day to make the acceptance of a girl into a day of international celebration and invoke empathy?
The girl child should be an equal child.
The girl child should be a rightful child.
The girl child should be a respected child.
Celebrate Gender Equality. Celebrate that if men are, so are women and in all equality too. Not more, not less. Celebrate us as equals. That might be the day when this place might be a little less conflicted and little more loving.
Celebrate as the LIGHT yet STRENTH is born!
