March 8 arrives each year with pink banners, corporate seminars, and inspirational quotes about strong women.But beyond the glitter lie questions we rarely ask - about workplace harassment, invisible labour, policies that remain posters, and the simple right of women to rest.A reflection on the politics of celebrating women for one day.
The Colour of One Day: Rethinking International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day is that curious time of the year when the world suddenly remembers that women exist. For one brief, glorious moment, societies that otherwise move along quite comfortably - occasionally tripping over centuries of patriarchy without noticing - pause to celebrate womanhood.
On this day, the colour pink erupts everywhere. Social media timelines resemble a coordinated flamingo migration. Corporate presentations acquire suspiciously rosy templates. Institutions organise seminars, panel discussions, and photo sessions that proclaim their unwavering commitment to gender justice - at least until the next budget meeting.
It is all very festive.
Perhaps this ritual is not entirely surprising. History has always been fond of designating special days to remember people who have sacrificed greatly for society. We have days for workers, days for teachers, days for the environment. Women, too, receive their annual commemorative slot.
One day.
Twenty-four carefully curated hours.
The economy joins the celebration with admirable enthusiasm. Online gift stores remind you to send exquisite presents to the woman you love the most. Jewellery brands offer irresistible discounts, gently reinforcing the timeless belief that women possess a mysterious, almost gravitational attraction to gold and diamonds. Apparently centuries of patriarchy were complicated, but marketing is simple: when in doubt, add sparkle.
For a day, appreciation glitters everywhere.
And then, like most glitter, it quietly settles into the corners of the room and disappears.
Empowerment Within Invisible Boundaries
Because behind the cheerful banners and congratulatory speeches lie questions that rarely make it onto the stage - questions that women continue asking long after the pink decorations have been taken down.
Take leadership, for instance. Institutions often proudly announce their commitment to empowering women. Leadership positions are indeed open to women - provided they possess a certain admirable quality: the ability to lead without disturbing the delicate architecture of male comfort. The invisible lakshman rekhas of institutional culture remain firmly in place, politely reminding women how far empowerment is expected to travel.
Political parties are not particularly different. Women who demonstrate competence and independence are applauded - sometimes even awarded a bouquet - before being carefully escorted to the margins.
The Curious Case of Work–Life Balance
Then there is the great philosophical question that continues to fascinate society:
“How do you manage everything?”
The question is usually directed at women who excel professionally while raising children. It is delivered with genuine curiosity, as though the woman has discovered a rare species of time management unknown to science.
Strangely, men are rarely asked the same question. No one stops a successful male professional to inquire, with tender concern, “But how do you manage your career and your children?”
Apparently fatherhood operates on an entirely different metaphysical plane.
Women who choose to remain child-free face another puzzle. Society finds this deeply unsettling. A woman without children is often regarded the way people regard an unfinished building: structurally impressive, perhaps, but somehow incomplete.
On the other hand, women who give up careers to care for their families are celebrated as ideal role models. Their sacrifices are praised in glowing speeches about “the strength of motherhood.”
Yet women who pursue opportunities that take them away from home are often judged with remarkable speed. Their children are pitied, their priorities questioned, and their ambition quietly labelled as selfish.
Motherhood, society insists, must be a woman’s ultimate fulfilment - the central axis around which everything else rotates. Career, intellectual curiosity, personal ambition: all these are acceptable hobbies, provided they politely orbit around the sun of domestic responsibility.
Ironically, when fathers make comparable sacrifices for their children, the response is rather different. Instead of applause, they risk being described as men who somehow failed to “make it.”
The Suspicion Around Women Without a “Family Tag”
There is another category of women who continue to unsettle society in quiet but profound ways: women who do not carry what one might call a socially approved “family tag.” Single women, separated women, and divorced women often discover that their social visibility comes with an uncomfortable price. Their independence is not always read as autonomy; instead, it is frequently interpreted with caution, suspicion, and sometimes with unmistakably lurid curiosity.
In a culture that continues to define a woman’s respectability through her visible relationship to a man, the absence of that marker transforms her presence into something socially ambiguous. Without the protective label of someone’s wife or someone’s daughter, her embodied existence is subtly recast as a site of speculation and desire. The gaze she encounters is rarely neutral. It oscillates between pity, moral judgment, and a peculiar fascination - as though a woman outside the institution of marriage represents a problem waiting to be explained.
Independence, in such cases, becomes both a freedom and a social burden. A woman without a family tag is expected to constantly negotiate boundaries that society itself refuses to clearly define.
Marriage, Motherhood, and the Myth of Security
Marriage brings its own comforting narrative. Women are often advised that marriage ensures companionship in old age - someone who will be there to care for them.
Reality, however, has recently developed a habit of complicating this story. Children grow up, move away, pursue careers, and sometimes live thousands of miles away from their parents. Visits become occasional, phone calls scheduled, and the emotional geography of families begins to resemble an international flight map.
As this becomes increasingly common, some of the reassuring clichés about marriage and parenthood begin to wobble slightly.
Which brings us to a question that society still finds deeply confusing:
How do we respond to a married woman with children who simply wants some time for herself?
Not a revolution; Not a rebellion; Just a little space.
A few quiet hours that do not belong to anyone else.
For reasons no sociologist has fully explained, this modest request can produce remarkable levels of anxiety.
The Invisible Women of the Informal Economy
But the world of women is far larger - and far more complicated - than the polite debates that usually fill International Women’s Day panels.
Consider the women working in the unorganised sector. While confronting the same social expectations imposed on all women, they must fight an additional battle every single day: harassment at the workplace.
The fisherwoman who walks miles balancing baskets heavier than the promises made in election manifestos.
The construction worker who spends her days under a burning sun, lifting bricks while men supervise.
The domestic worker who quietly keeps someone else’s home spotless before returning to a cramped space she calls her own.
Their stories of everyday humiliation and vulnerability are often unimaginable to many upper-middle-class women who speak confidently about empowerment on conference stages.
The precarity of their employment makes them even more vulnerable. When your livelihood depends on the goodwill of a contractor, a supervisor, or an employer, resisting sly comments, unsolicited touches, or vulgar jokes becomes far more difficult. Survival often demands silence.
For many women belonging to marginalised castes or Adivasi communities, this vulnerability multiplies. Gender injustice does not arrive alone; it travels comfortably alongside caste hierarchies and economic precarity. In such circumstances, reacting to misogyny is not simply a matter of courage - it becomes a question of survival.
Laws, Posters, and the Theatre of Gender Sensitivity
Laws, of course, exist. Policies have been written. Committees have been formed.
But somewhere between legislation and lived reality, many of these promises quietly transform into posters.
Governments proudly announce schemes for women’s empowerment. Reports are released. Campaign slogans appear. Gender sensitivity becomes a fashionable phrase in policy documents.
Meanwhile, the way our judicial systems handle certain rape cases continues to leave many citizens disillusioned. When sexual predators walk freely, the burden of safety curiously shifts to women themselves.
Women are advised to be careful.
To avoid certain places; To return home early; To dress cautiously.
Predators remain free.
Women are asked to stay under lock and key.
Workplaces, meanwhile, are legally required to establish Internal Complaints Committees (ICCs) under the POSH Act of 2013. In theory, these committees exist to ensure that women can report harassment safely.
In practice, one often wonders: what is the everyday life of an ICC?
In Kerala, ICCs briefly became headline material during discussions surrounding sexual abuse allegations in the Malayalam film industry and the findings of the Hema Committee report. For a few weeks, television studios debated workplace harassment with impressive intensity.
And then the news cycle moved on.
Beyond becoming a media spectacle, how many organisations genuinely maintain functioning ICCs? How many employees receive training about the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and their rights under it? How many committees include an external member, as mandated by law, to ensure that complaints do not quietly disappear within the institutional ecosystem?
When committees exist only on paper and awareness remains minimal, one cannot help asking an uncomfortable question:
What moral authority do we really possess to indulge in symbolic celebrations like International Women’s Day?
Women’s Bodies in the Geography of War
There is yet another group of women whose stories rarely enter these conversations: women living in regions marked by war and conflict.
As new sites of war erupt across the world and existing conflicts continue unabated, public debates focus primarily on geopolitics, national security, and humanitarian aid. Occasionally we hear about women bravely holding families together in volatile regions.
But what about the intimate, everyday realities of women’s bodies in these circumstances?
Wars can halt flights; Trade can stop; Borders can close.
But the menstrual cycle does not pause while the world negotiates ceasefires.
Menarche, menstruation, perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause - these are not medical footnotes in a textbook. They are the everyday rhythms of women’s lives.
What happens to menstrual hygiene when supply chains collapse?
Where do women find privacy in refugee camps or conflict zones?
How do adolescent girls negotiate the confusion of their first periods when survival itself becomes the primary concern?
While global media debates gender equity and menstrual rights in polished conference halls, countless women negotiate these biological realities under circumstances that rarely appear in headlines.
The Quiet Crisis: When Women Ask for Rest
And finally, there is the quiet crisis that often goes unnoticed.
When a woman - any woman - says she is exhausted, that she is on the verge of a mental breakdown, that she simply cannot carry all the expectations placed upon her anymore, what does society do?
Very often, it dismisses her.
A woman asking for rest can quickly be labelled irresponsible.
A woman expressing emotional distress risks being dismissed as dramatic.
A woman refusing to perform endless roles may be branded “unwomanly.”
The world that constantly demands that women be superwomen rarely pauses to ask whether superhuman endurance should be the standard expectation in the first place.
Sometimes what a woman needs is astonishingly simple: leave from the roles imposed upon her.
A little care; A little attention; A little space to breathe.
Beyond the Pink
Which brings us back to International Women’s Day.
If women across the world continue to face harassment at workplaces, indifference from institutions, systemic vulnerabilities shaped by caste and class, biological realities ignored in policy discussions, and emotional exhaustion dismissed as weakness - what exactly are we celebrating with such enthusiasm on March 8?
Because the future of women’s freedom may not depend on pink banners, panel discussions, or commemorative hashtags.
Perhaps the most radical question a woman can ask today is still a very simple one:
Can a woman exist as a person before she is expected to perform the roles of daughter, wife, mother, caregiver, and silent warrior?
When society learns to answer that question without hesitation, International Women’s Day might finally become what it claims to be—a celebration.
Until then, the colour pink will continue to appear every March like a cheerful guest who arrives punctually each year - bringing glitter, speeches, and hashtags - before quietly leaving the deeper questions behind.
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