That Women Are From Moon And Men Are From Mars Is No Longer True.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


  That Women Are From Moon And Men Are From Mars Is No Longer True.

  
Today is International Women's Day. The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights. Yes women's human rights are equal to those of men. Both are equal constituents of human race on this earth. It is no longer true to say that women are from  moon and men are from mars, emphasizing the difference, although the French man might still say 'viva the difference". And scientists say there  is only just less than 2 per cent difference genetically between the two, and that it has nothing to do with faculties!

The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights - See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/international-womens-day#sthash.YZ6aHuzw.dpuf

It won't be very wrong to say that the women's rights movement  began as largely a western product of the Era of Enlightenment in the European history. It then flourished more vigorously in the United States of America from which its evangelists spread the message across the elitist world. Naturally therefore, what rights are included under women's rights vary in time and cultures.

  In the States, Mary Wollstonecraft in  her 1791-92 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, now considered a classic of feminist history,  argued primarily for the rights of woman to be educated. Through education would come emancipation. The women's suffrage was fought for by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). Her Seneca Falls (New York) Convention(1848) and

Declaration of Sentiments written byElizabethwhich was approved there, is credited with initiating the long struggle towards women's rights and woman suffrage. She was also active and effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws.  She died nearly 20 years to go before the United States granted women the right to vote.

When Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell were married(1855), they protested against laws of the time in which women lost their legal existence upon marriage and this protest was instrumental in providing legal existence and rights to women in marriage there. 

The modern women's rights movement began in the 1960s and gained momentum with the development of the scholarly field of Feminist Jurisprudence in the 1970s. In Britain women  gained equal voting rights with men only in 1928.With the end of the First World War many other countries followed – the Netherlands (1917), Austria, Azerbaijan,[132] Canada, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Poland and Sweden (1918), Germany and Luxembourg (1919), Turkey (1934), and the United States (1920)

 Even today, there is some disagreement about what constitute women's rights. Does a woman have a right to control family size? to equality of treatment in the workplace? to equality of access to military assignments? Usually, "women's rights" refers to whether women have equality with the rights of men where women and men's capacities are the same.

In  India although Gandhiji incorporated women's movements into the Quit India movement and independent women's organizations began to emerge , it was only in post-Independent period women's right movement acquired momentum. However, Despite the progress made by Indian feminist movements, women living in modern India still face many issues of discrimination. India's patriarchal culture has made the process of gaining land-ownership rights and access to education challenging.[4] In the past two decades, there has also emerged a disturbing trend of sex-selective abortion.[5] To Indian feminists, these are seen as injustices worth struggling against

In modern context, women's rights refer to those that should govern in the economic, civil, socio-cultural, and political walks of life. The full economic rights that should accrue to them are in  matters of property rights,  profession, rights to income, in finace dealings, and for maternity leave in service. In civil rights they range in the fields of legal, marriage- diverse, family life and parenthood.  Socio-cultural rights demands are mainly in, sex and control over own body, reproduction and family size,education, religious worship, dress and moral codes, home roles. Lastly ,equal political rights.