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Celebrating March-8 International Women's Day
By KTM Metro Reporter
March 8, 2011: It has been already one hundred years since women of the world have started celebrating the International Women’s Day. Women all over the world have celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (IWD) in their own ways.
In Nepal, women have celebrated the IWD marching through the streets in Kathmandu. They have carried placards and banners with various different slogans.
Various laws have been discriminating the Nepalese women. Even the newly drafted constitution has tended to include the discriminatory law such as citizenship law that makes the foreigners marrying Nepalese women to wait 15 years before getting citizenship whereas Nepalese men marrying foreign women don’t need to wait at all.
Social discrimination still persists. Parents still prefer sons. Hindus need sons to set fire on their funeral pyres. Certainly, some women including Sujata Koirala, daughter of Girija Prasad Koirala have set fire on the funeral pyre of their fathers but these are a few exceptional cases.
Discrimination against women prevails not only in Nepal but also even in the advanced country such as America. Voanews.com has in its today’s news report stated, “more US women are earning college degrees but that advancement in education hasn’t translated into income equality in the workplace.” "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being" offers a look at the full measure of a woman’s life.
Thehindu.com reports that with only 10.8 per cent of women representation in the Lok Sabha and 10.3 per cent in the Rajya Sabha, India ranks 98th in the world according to the data released by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU): an international group that works for promoting democracy, peace and co-operation in the world. India, the world’s largest democracy, has now only 59 women representatives out of 545 members in Lok Sabha, while there are 25 female MPs in the 242-member Rajya Sabha. While India shares its position with Benin and Jordan, it is ranked 47 places below Pakistan and 80 places behind Nepal. With 22.2 per cent women MPs in its Lower House and 17 per cent in the Upper House, Pakistan is placed at 51 while Nepal is ranked 18, with 33.3 per cent of female MPs in its parliament, according to the IPU list released on January 31 this year.
