Editor's Blog: Ladies in waiting

The International Women's Day Centennial on March 8 started off with great promise. In celebration, my better half served me breakfast in bed and wished me success as a woman of substance on both cheeks.

Arriving at the office, chirpy male colleagues wished me a very happy women's day and further added that all women in the home or at the work place should power on.

I was on cloud nine. A daughter, sister, wife, mother and a poised professional…. life could not be better until I watched the news on TV as some politicians in India created a shockingly unprecedented ruckus in the upper house of parliament (Rajya Sabha) over the 108th Constitution Amendment Bill which provides for 33 per cent reservation for women in both parliament and legislative assemblies.

Checking the news agenda; nearer home, Iran's ‘greatest living poet' Simin Behbahani had her passport confiscated and was banned from leaving the country.

She had been invited by the Mayor of Paris to speak at a celebration of International Women's Day.

My euphoria turned to dismay. What is this world coming to? I fumed. If the men of two of the most ancient civilisations on earth have trouble creating an equal partnership with women, then what hope is there for the women of the rest of the world?

The parliamentary fracas particularly upset me. Indians, as I know them, are extremely patient and it is expected that politicians in the country are expected to behave with decorum. And yet the tearing of copies of the bill and the shouting and manhandling of the chairman of the house on an occasion that was positioned as a milestone on the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day was so wrong that it sent a message that some Indian men either feared or loathed their women.

In a country called the mother- land and where many worship at the feet of the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, and the goddess of knowledge Saraswati, it is heartbreaking that while women are glorified as mother, sister and daughter - a leap out of her male-imposed role results in brouhaha in the hallowed halls of the upper house.

But life, I've found, is full of twists. I had missed watching the Oscars at 3am that particular Monday and later that evening, watching a recorded version, I was overjoyed that Kathryn Bigelow and her macho Iraq war film The Hurt Locker had walked away with a number of Academy Awards, making her the first ever woman director to have achieved that honour.

There is justice somewhere, I thought, and I was right. The following day the women's bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha. The result, after a three-hour debate: 186 for and one against. The battle however is not over. The bill must now be passed by the lower house (Lok Sabha) and ratified by at least half the states.

For now, India's heart is democratically sound but the journey to a full constitutional amendment is mined with hurdles and full justice for women is still a distant dream.

What's really paradoxical is that the symbol of justice has a female persona and yet many females the world over have not found her very helpful when it comes to their rights.

Some, especially in the Scandinavian countries, have found her; the majority is still waiting.