Yet another International Women’s Day has arrived and there will be no scarcity of pomp and grandeur in its celebration. If the day is devoted to bestow honour to womanhood and acclaim the progress made by women in various walks of life thus far, it’s an all-pervasive and telling reality that when it comes to gender equality, construed in general as well as specific contexts, there is still a huge gap. In a day where polished words, all conveying and reminding the need to work incessantly towards the above holy goal of reducing gender parity will be seen aplenty, the UN Women, which is a United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and women empowerment has at least been candid enough to lay open the truth.  Among the multiple hard-hitting tweets on Saturday, the one which stands apart is “It is 2020 and no country in the world has achieved gender equality”. This is perhaps the truest reflection of what it is on the ground and as such, the day with its theme this year “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights” must act as a further reminder to the stakeholders to act sincerely in delivering the needful. 
If the above tweets portray the general global reality with obvious variations in degree of gender bias from nation to nation, when it comes to India, it will require no extra academic assignment to comment that it’s undoubtedly of the highest level. The society still retains its patriarchal character to a good extent and despite advances which have no doubt lessened the quantum of discrimination, the eerie methods of suppressions are still at play, which can be reflected now and then through the news captured by media.The list of discriminations will be long and the most commonly found and deliberated are unequal pay & sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, rising sexual harassments and all imaginable forms of violence against women and girls. Struggles to their  mitigation are on and an occasional victory do catches attention, just as the case when the SC, a few weeks earlier directed the government to grant PC to all women army officers. Newspapers and discussion  platforms devoted much of their space and time in hailing it, but, it mustn’t be erased from the mind that it hasn’t come so easily and had been a result of an arduous and time-consuming legal battle. There are so many instances where the legitimate dues that women of the country are entitled to are undergoing long waits. Over the last eventful nine months, parliament has seen discussions over so many grave issues. But not a single word about 33 % reservations of seats there. 
May sound cynic though, but its true after all - it’s still a long way to traverse to attain reasonable gender equality in the country.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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