Mukti Celebrated Women’s Day 2022

International Women’s Day is celebrated across the globe every year on March 8. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow” # Break the Bias. Mukti, on 8^th March 2022, Tuesday to celebrate the day and to commemorate the achievements of women, raise awareness against gender bias, and take action for equality has organized a virtual program wherein around 80 participants (male-female both) including Mukti staff, volunteers, MCDF members, teachers and students hold discussions.

The program has been divided into two parts. Participants have discussions on gender inequality, women’s mental health in the first part, rights and personal experiences in the second part.

In the first part, the keynote speaker at the event is Ms. Monijinjir Byapari who is a social worker and has long been working on gender inequality, child protection and women’s mental health for over 21 years.

Ms. Byapari through her informative speech makes the participants aware of gender biases women face every day in all walks of life and to fight the gender biases a woman has to be strong physically as well as mentally. She emphasizes the mental health of a woman. She said women face more mental issues than men (poverty, physical and sexual abuse, sexual violence, prenatal depression, menopause etc). In addition, women’s mental health is further affected by anxiety, stress and depression. She describes these three types of mental states beautifully and the ways in which they can be easily healed. A woman can handle these phases easily by balancing work and life- she can develop her personality pattern, increase social connections, have faith in her own autonomy and decision-making capability, acquire financial security, utilize the scope of innovation and creativity, achieve acceptance and empathy by encountering challenges and diversity of tasks.

The second part of the discussion has been conducted by Ms. Nandita Jayraman – program manager of Mukti on rights. The one who has the power is not the only one who has the right. Equitable distribution of rights is required. The fight for rights is not just for women. Men have an equal responsibility to give women their own rights. If we all come forward together, we may be able to break the barrier of gender inequality. In order to fight for rights, we must know that we also have some responsibilities. Right means power or strength. With every right comes some responsibility, duty. But if we do not realize our responsibilities then the right will not be exercised properly. As we move forward, so do the people around us. We need to recognize those who want to hold us back and we need to change their minds. Understanding the importance of responsibility and duty will eliminate inequality among us; create a cohesive society and free future generations from the curse of inequality.

At the end of the program, the participants share their real-life experiences and their opinion. Everyone agreed that if we can overcome the physical disability to the mental disability then we can create a non-discriminatory society and we may not have to celebrate Women’s Day separately, we will celebrate Human Day.