By Zainab Khanday
Twenty six years of surviving into the 21st century, and women across the world are still fighting for rights that should have never been questioned. It is sad to note that fighting for a basic human necessity has been taken synonymous to favouring man hate. Today, right now, if you’re a woman and read this, the world would label it as a privilege when in turn it is something we are bound to be doing. It is not a privilege. It is a right. A right that shouldn’t have required permission or struggle to obtain. A right that shouldn’t have been taken as a topic for debate. A right that shouldn’t have been suppressed. Women across the world never asked for superiority over men. They asked for what has always been theirs to claim—equality. Dear all, it was never man v/s woman. It was always a man and a woman.
Revisiting the ancient times—when women had to submit to their husbands or fathers. In fact, medieval Europe being ruled by queens itself did not allow women beside men. If we still go on questioning the abilities of women then I ask, I ask why were women working in factories during the first world war? Why were they out manufacturing weapons and working commercially because their fathers, husbands and brothers had to fight in the name of their nations?
Do we still think in the big 2026 women are not capable? Even after knowing the increase in women work rates from 20% to 40% and above, do we still need to oppress women just because they are physically weaker?
I, as a girl understand the depth of struggles that women all over the world go through. The same woman who lived posh in 1970 in Afghanistan sits at a refugee camp in a blue burkha?
I fail to understand why there is a girl out there who could do it really better than me. Write better speeches and care in a better way than I can. But only she sits behind the four walls of her house and I get to live my life the way she doesn’t. It makes me sad.
It is today that I, Zainab Khanday rise as a girl to let you all know that I asked myself once whilst being a victim of oppression as a girl child, why? Why is it that my opinion was taken as to be bossy whereas the opinion of someone from the opposite gender was taken to be ‘intellectual’ ? Now is the time and I am here to change that.
In the wise words of Hillary Clinton— ” Human rights are women rights and women rights are human rights.”
Let us, as humans be for real once, out of 195 countries in the world only 15 prove us equality of men and women? Equality was never a concession rather it was a responsibility that every human being owed to their own daughter, mother, sister and wife.
Because at the end, there is no limit to what we as women can achieve.
As one, let’s be the change we want to see.
