Thank you ladies!

Today, very coincidentally, I was made to realise how far some of us women have really come... Today, I realised afresh how much we have forgotten what our less fortunate sisters-in-arms fought for decades ago. How much I,personally, have taken for granted about freedom of thought, action, ideas, way of life and living.

So why this wake up call? One conversation. One TV show. And things I have not given much thought to was brought home forcibly to me again.

The conversation was about widowed young girls - as young as eight, 10 or in their early teens, being sent to Vrindavan to spend the rest of their lives with shaved heads and in abject misery. Even today. About young women, aged 16, 20 and 25, widowed and spending their entire lives as the poorest of poor relatives, consigned to doing the most menial jobs for some food and shelter. How over the centuries men ruled our lives with an iron fist... and we smiled and smiled and took it because we were made to believe we deserved it.

Then I saw a TV show about an advertising agency in New York in the 50s. And everything came back to me in a rush! How men would never look at a woman unless she was 'hot'... unfortunately that is still true of men today but it is getting better!
How if a guy took you out, then you were automatically expected to jump into the sack as a "thank you" gesture.

How in offices, the only way men used to look at a woman was by undressing her mentally. How in a zillion different ways women were slighted, put down, relegated to less than a human condition because the grown up gorillas in suits thought they were the masters of the universe. Because they said so... and it was a man's world!

How, the only thing that a woman were supposed to want to be was a wife and mother! As long as the lord and master gave her a house, kids and money, she was supposed to be deliriously happy and contented. God forbid if she actually wanted to use her brains! What brains? Women were supposed to be bird-witted, didn't we know?
As for the guy? He could do whatever he wanted - have affairs by the dozen, drink himself silly, behave outrageously - women were expected to look pretty, obedient, demure and take what ever he dished out on the chin, dust herself off and carry on as if nothing happened!

I know that today in large swathes of the world, including in our own country where the girl child is being killed off before she is born and brides are still being burnt, women are still at the bottom of the pit, trodden upon, mutilated and dishonoured, ill-treated and living in the most appalling conditions.

So while I shouldn't really cloak myself in selfish satisfaction, I am so grateful that I have been able to do what I wanted to do and lived the life I wanted to live - with dignity,self-respect,satisfaction and independence... and yes, happiness! Thank you Emily Pankhurst. Thank you Germaine Greer. And all those ladies who burnt your bras and stood up for yourselves, to make your stand in a man's world. You made a better life possible for women like me. I am truly grateful!