Whenever Women’s Day is around the corner, we suddenly see a splurge in all forms of media trying to do something around it and make women feel important. It is obvious that the marketing people realise that it is an opportunity to be seized and rightly so because women make up 48% of the population of India. I can see the surprise look on your face, but it is a fact, you can google it. We are almost 50% of the population but equality is still a far away idea.

Few years ago, when I was traveling, I struck a conversation with a woman who asked me a simple yet complex question- what does it mean to be a woman in India? I told her that it was similar to being a woman anywhere in the world, the status of women varied to a few degrees here and there but overall, we are all in a similar space, we are becoming who we want to be, expecting equality and fighting as and when need be in our own ways. This was a time when a rape case in India had just made global headlines. Everyone was looking at India with scared eyes. After a discussion on this topic, we went about in different directions, but that question stayed with me and it keeps popping up in my head time and again – what does it mean to be a woman in India? – the answer keeps changing.

Let me share something that happened as recent as 2020. The pandemic got me thinking and pushed me to join a driving school to learn how to drive, something that had been on my list forever. As I was filling out the form, I noticed that there was a mandatory section where one had to either fill out the name of their father or husband. This irritated me, so I asked the girl behind the counter why there was no option for the mother or wife’s name, why only father or husband. She looked at me perplexed not understanding what the problem was. When I reiterated the question, she replied saying that she did not know the reason and it is the general norm and the forms were sent to them by their head office. Gender bias even in something as simple as a form stays invisible, most people do not even notice it, that is how ingrained it is in our minds. So, being a woman in India can mean being invisible even though we are 48% of the population.

But not all women stay invisible. There are many out there fighting for what they think is right, fully visible, and open under the patriarchal glare. The recent judgement in favour of journalist Priya Ramani is a testimony to that. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and speak against the atrocities of a powerful man in our country. But she did it with the solidarity of other women who were also willing to speak up. Their unwavering spirited fight was inspiring, the judgement passed in her favour gave a great impetus to women who want to fight for what is right. One woman’s fight was a big step forward for all women in India.

We have definitely come a long way. I dread to think that I live in a country which had Sati as a custom. For the uninitiated, Sati was a custom where the woman was burned alive in the same funeral pyre of her husband, that level of cruelty is beyond my understanding. It has been banned for a while now but honour killing still exists in our country. Hopefully, we will talk about that too in past tense someday. But for that to happen we must question norms and not blindly follow things that has been happening for the past decades. Roles in a relationship, in a family, at workplace should not be defined based on gender. When I travel in a local train in Mumbai, in the ladies’ compartment, I see working women who have finished a day’s hard work and are heading home while prepping for dinner in the train itself so that she can put dinner on the table as soon as she reaches home. I have never seen that in the men’s compartment. I guess that will only happen when we make sure there are no gender-based roles at every home.

But for all this to happen, we all must believe that this kind of change is necessary and make sure that change begins with us because that is always the starting point. And hopefully one day in the future when someone asks me – what does it mean to be a woman in India? – I will have a proud answer to give.