Gender Equality: Planet 50:50 Inspire Anew

Year 2016 is almost over and in every society in the world today, women continue to suffer the evils of deep rooted patriarchy. The discourse around mainstreaming of gender seems to be getting louder every day, with women across the globe joining in the movement. There are a multitude of preventive, diagnostic and curative efforts and campaigns in progress run by global organisations like UN, Corporates, governments and activists alike.

Despite all this, the progress to achieve UN’s SDG#5 Planet 50:50 by 2030 is very slow. We need to pause and question ourselves, why?

Sisterhoods have always encouraged and inspired women to step out of their comfort zones and take affirmative action for themselves and others around them. Women’s networks push and motivate them to believe in themselves and realize their aspirations. To give some momentum to our endeavour of making India and the world more gender balanced, women communities of activists need to rally together, form coalitions and inspire anew.

Collaborate, Customise and Implement learning from one region to another. That technology has shrunk the world into a really small place is something we are all well aware of. The speed of dissemination of information and knowledge today is the real catalyst in enabling transformations on the ground. Let it not go waste. Gender networks must remember that they are not in a competition, that eliminating deep-seated patriarchy is the only objective and the metric to measure performance for a social entrepreneurship is based on what it returns to society and not what it keeps for itself.

Moving the needle of Gender Equality is feasible only if we hold hands and work towards the common goal, with each other and not without, synergize and catapult our movements together into a revolution. Isn’t that what leaning together also means?

Women of the world, Carpe diem: Seize the day! This is the Fourth Wave.

Views expressed are that of the author