Women's Day or farce?

4 Mar 2006, 2312 hrs IST,Shobhaa De,TNN

Everyday's Women's Day. A woman has to make her own day, and do so with confidence and courage. To ear-mark one day of the year for the occasion is to insult women who do not possess calendars and have absolutely no idea that the rest of the world is 'celebrating' their gender.

There is no celebration in the lives of those women who have no access to education, to personal liberties and even to their own thoughts. Most of them are born as 'accidents'. Unwanted even by the woman in whose womb they've grown.

They are resented at birth, unsafe in their own homes. Their lives are valued at less than a price of a bicycle or a goat. Money? Forget it. They have to earn it through hard labour, carrying stones to build roads that women like you and me drive on in our fancy cars. But even that money does not belong to them. Nothing does.
Not even their name, which is changed when they marry strangers. Husbands, who are bought at a price by impatient fathers anxious to off-load their 'burdens'. Everything is 'given' to them and that includes the two stale rotis they eat.
source: http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1438227.cms