From token celebration and one-sided empowerment towards a shared, reciprocal ethic of gender justice that liberates both women and men from the burdens of patriarchy and consumerist “freedom.”
Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad
Every year, on the 8th of March, the world pauses to honour women, their achievements, struggles, and endurance through ages of oppression and marginalization. Yet, beyond the customary tributes, corporate campaigns, and policy debates, International Women’s Day should ideally provoke a deeper introspection: What have we learned from history about gendered power structures, and how should we envision equality in the twenty-first century? The issue is not simply about celebrating women’s empowerment, it is also about confronting how gender itself —as social construct, biological reality, and cultural narrative has been shaped, manipulated, and reinvented by civilizational forces across time.
The Historical Subjugation of Women
Human history, in almost every epoch and culture, bears witness to an unfortunate and recurring pattern, the relegation of women to the background of public life. Anthropologists trace some roots of this inequality to prehistoric divisions of labour: men, due to greater muscular strength, assumed roles that demanded physical prowess — hunting, fighting, protecting, while women were naturally assigned nurturing roles such as childbearing, household management, and food preparation. What began as a practical biological arrangement soon transformed into a moral hierarchy. Physical difference became a justification for systemic subordination.
As societies evolved from tribalism to feudal structures, and then to industrial economies, patriarchy consolidated itself not merely through brute force but through ideology. Honour, virtue, propriety, and even spirituality was reinterpreted to keep women “in their place.” Ancient legal codes whether in Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, or pre-modern India, consistently privileged the male lineage and restricted female agency over property, body, and voice. Even religious institutions, despite their occasional calls to protect women, often sanctified male dominance through divine command and ritualized obedience.
This combination of biology, power, and ideology created a sustained system of injustice that persisted for millennia. The patriarch, as both symbolic and economic figure, became the law-giver and gatekeeper. In this world, the woman’s labour, emotional, domestic, and reproductive became invisible. She cooked, cleaned, organized, and nurtured, yet her contribution was never quantified or recognized within systems of production or politics. Modern economists continue to point out that gross domestic product (GDP) omits the value of unpaid care work, without which societies would collapse. Her labour, though foundational, was unacknowledged, and her dependence on male earnings became both cause and consequence of patriarchal bondage.
Power, Dependence, and the Patriarchal Construct
The concept of male authority was reinforced not only by economics but also by notions of honour. In many traditional societies, a man’s reputation rested upon the perceived purity and obedience of the women in his family. The female body became the vessel of community pride and the theatre of moral policing. Any deviation from prescribed norms whether in dress, speech, or desire could be met with fierce reprisals, ranging from ostracism to violence. The patriarch thus wielded control not just over livelihood but over identity itself.
The paradox deepened further: women’s dependence was portrayed as protection, and men’s dominance was glorified as responsibility. The protector became the oppressor, though neither party always recognized the trap. Patriarchy, it must be understood, is not a conspiracy of men but a system that imprisons both genders in fixed roles. It glorifies men as warriors and providers but simultaneously denies them emotional range and vulnerability. Likewise, it exalts women as nurturers yet denies them autonomy and recognition. Both pay the price of the structure they inhabit.
The Industrial Shift and the “New Woman”
The rise of capitalism and industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries upended traditional gender relations. As factories replaced agricultural economies and as machines supplanted physical strength, the economic monopoly of men began to erode. Women entered mills, offices, and classrooms, often compelled by necessity more than ideology. Yet, capitalism rebranded this necessity as empowerment and used it for its own ends.
The new wage-earning woman symbolized progress, but the reality was far more complex. The capitalist economy required cheap, disciplined, and compliant labour, and women, long habituated to silent perseverance, were perfect recruits. In this way, capitalism commodified female labour without truly liberating the female self. It granted her a salary but little security, a career but continued subjugation.
Communism, ironically, offered a parallel narrative. It promised to dissolve gender roles in the name of economic equality but often subsumed women’s individuality into collective goals. The “New Woman” in Marxist and socialist discourse was an industrial worker and comrade, sharing spaces once reserved for men. Yet, she too was measured by productivity, not personhood. Both capitalism and communism, ideologically opposed yet structurally similar shaped the “emancipated woman” as an economic entity rather than as a fully realized human being.
The Gender Contradictions of Modern Empowerment
It is undeniable that women, through education, activism, and resilience, have broken countless barriers. They occupy positions of power, serve in armed forces, lead companies, and shape policies. However, this progress coexists with enduring exploitation. Gender pay gaps persist, workplace harassment is rampant, and glass ceilings continue to restrict advancement. Empowerment has often been partial, and at times, symbolic.
Moreover, the discourse around empowerment has produced new anxieties among men. The traditional provider role still weighs heavily on them, while societal expectations around masculinity remain rigid. Men are told to be assertive, successful, and self-sacrificing, but rarely allowed to be uncertain, emotional, or dependent. The feminist awakening, beneficial as it is, has also exposed the unequal emotional burdens men carry. In many cultures, including India, the man’s labour outside the home is taken for granted just as the woman’s labour inside it once was. Both genders thus remain caught in the same cycle of obligation, only the geography of labour has shifted.
This tension has given rise to what scholars’ term “the crisis of masculinity.” Men’s rights movements, though often controversial, articulate a legitimate concern: If equality means shared rights, should it not also imply shared responsibilities? Why must men continue as sole providers while simultaneously being criticized for embodying patriarchy? The double standard, in which women seek freedom without symmetrical accountability, risks reproducing the very inequality feminism sought to destroy.
The Half-Baked Liberation and Its Paradoxes
In many cases, “liberation” has been reduced to consumerist freedom: the right to dress as one pleases, to travel, to work, and to speak, all valid and necessary, yet stripped from any ethical sense of reciprocity. The ideal of equality has been displaced by the cult of autonomy, and autonomy without duty quickly mutates into alienation.
The criticism that some modern feminisms are “half-baked” emerges from precisely this imbalance. When empowerment becomes selective, demanding male adaptation without corresponding female transformation, it risks creating resentment rather than harmony. One cannot insist that men abandon patriarchy while women retain its privileges. If true equality is to be achieved, both must evolve in tandem, shedding inherited attitudes and embracing new standards of mutual cooperation.
This also requires rethinking contentious issues such as alimony, domestic violence laws, and the role of family courts in India. While these legal protections for women stem from genuine historical necessity, they have occasionally been misused, leading to moral and legal backlash. A society striving for gender balance must protect women from abuse but also ensure that men are not criminalized for the mere fact of being men. Equality before law must be gender-neutral otherwise, justice becomes partial, and resentment festers under the banner of rights.
Feminism, Responsibility, and Reciprocity
A more mature feminism, one rooted in moral philosophy rather than ideological rivalry, must embrace the principle of reciprocity. Equality cannot mean sameness, biology, temperament, and social context matter, but it must guarantee equal dignity and shared duty. The feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir had warned long ago that woman’s liberation would be incomplete unless she redefines her relationship with labour and love, not merely imitates male behaviour.
Similarly, men must reimagine masculinity beyond power. Protectiveness should give way to partnership, and authority to empathy. In households where both partners earn, both must also share domestic chores, parenting, and caregiving. Emotional labour, long the invisible domain of women, should now become a shared human responsibility.
Yet, to achieve such balance, feminism must shed its defensive posture and become self-critical. It must recognize that empowerment does not end with demanding rights but continues into fulfilling obligations. Celebrating Women’s Day should not mean antagonizing men but initiating renewed dialogue. Gender equality, after all, is not a contest but a covenant, a compact of fairness, compassion, and shared humanity.
Economic Valuation of Women’s Work
The greatest injustice of history remains the invisibility of women’s unpaid work. Studies across nations have demonstrated that if household tasks, feeding, cleaning, caregiving, organising, were monetized, they would constitute a significant share of global GDP. Yet neither capitalism nor state welfare systems truly account for this immense contribution. Recognition, in this context, must precede reform.
Progressive policies could include tax credits, social security benefits, or pension schemes for homemakers. But beyond policy, society must recalibrate its moral compass. The woman who manages a home is not “doing nothing”; she is performing the most foundational economic function — maintaining the human capital without which productivity cannot exist. Unless we dismantle this cultural blindness, even the best feminist theories will falter.
The Men’s Question
If women have been historical victims of exclusion, men today appear to be victims of expectation. From birth, they are trained to be tough, ambitious, and unyielding. They are rarely permitted to fail, express vulnerability, or opt out of traditional duties. A man who chooses to be a homemaker is still stigmatized far more than a woman who chooses a career. The psychological toll of this conditioning has been immense, manifesting in high male suicide rates, work-related stress, and emotional exhaustion.
Thus, genuine gender justice must empathize with men as well. The men’s movement, though sometimes hijacked by reactionaries, raises questions worth asking. Why is emotional dependence considered weakness for a man? Why do legal structures frequently presume him guilty in family disputes? Why does society still equate “being a man” with domination or suppression of feeling?
The answer lies in recognizing that patriarchy, while benefiting some men, dehumanizes all. Freedom from its binds would therefore liberate both genders. Equality should not be a zero-sum game, rather, it should expand the moral space for all human beings to live authentically and compassionately.
Cultural Narratives and the Gender Imagination
Our understanding of womanhood and manhood has never been purely biological. Literature, religion, cinema, and folklore collectively construct gender ideals that shape societal behaviour. From the self-sacrificing mothers of myth to the stoic warriors of epics, gender identities have been scripted through narrative imagination. In the Indian context, figures like Sita, Draupadi, and Savitri embody varying ideals of feminine virtue — patience, endurance, wit, and fidelity yet rarely autonomy. On the other hand, masculine archetypes such as Rama or Arjuna embody heroism but also emotional restraint.
Modernity, with its emphasis on individuality, has begun rewriting these archetypes. The contemporary woman refuses to be defined by duty alone; the contemporary man, by domination. Still, the residual power of cultural myths should not be underestimated. Popular culture continues to oscillate between glorifying the traditional and romanticizing the rebellious, rarely reconciling the two. The task of the present generation is not to discard heritage but to reinterpret it through the lens of coexistence and fairness.
Towards a Cooperative Gender Ethic
True gender equality demands not confrontation but cooperation — what sociologists call complementary partnership. The aim should not be to reverse roles but to balance them intelligently. Every household, workplace, and community must move from gendered hierarchies to task-based collaborations.
Education will play the decisive role here. Boys and girls must both be taught the values of empathy, teamwork, and shared labour from childhood. Corporate policies must ensure equal pay and flexible parental leave for both genders. Media must abandon the tired trope of the “suffering woman” and the “stoic man” and instead portray the full spectrum of human emotion.
Moreover, faith traditions particularly in societies where religion remains influential — must be reinterpreted to align with justice. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, when read through their ethical rather than patriarchal lenses, all emphasize mutual respect and compassion between men and women. Spiritual equality precedes social equality. It is thus time to reclaim religion as an ally, not an enemy, in the struggle for a moral gender order.
Rethinking Women’s Day
International Women’s Day, therefore, should transcend tokenism. It should not merely serve as a ritual celebration of isolated achievements but as an annual reminder of unfinished work. The goal is not to glorify one gender or to vilify the other but to envision humanity as an integrated whole. The danger lies in letting Women’s Day degenerate into a battlefield where men feel accused and women defensive.
Instead, it should be a forum of solidarity, where both genders examine how far they have come and how much remains undone. Women’s Day must celebrate homemakers as much as CEOs, mothers as much as ministers, and men who cook, care, and cry as much as women who lead, write, and fight. The path to equality is not paved by antagonism but by understanding.
The Way Forward
The challenge before modern civilization is dual, to dismantle material inequalities while reshaping emotional education. Policy can legislate fairness, but only values can cultivate empathy. We must build workplaces where gender does not determine worth, families where chores are shared without resentment, and legal systems where justice serves truth rather than stereotype.
In this evolution, both men and women must shed outdated privileges. Women must embrace agency with accountability; men must embrace equality with humility. Feminism, when understood rightly, is not anti-male, it is pro-human. It seeks to heal historical wounds, not to open new ones. The movement must, therefore, re-centre itself around solidarity, compassion, and interdependence rather than competitiveness and guilt.
Revolution begins not with the raising of slogans but with the revision of conscience. The “new perspective” on Women’s Day must thus redefine empowerment as shared responsibility. The metrics of progress should not be who dominates but how harmoniously we coexist.
Conclusion: Towards a Human Future
As we step into another decade of debates on gender, feminism, and equality, one truth becomes clear: humanity cannot afford a war between its halves. Neither emancipation nor honour thrives in conflict. What is needed is a civilizational recalibration, an ethic of cooperation that respects difference without hierarchy and demands equality without hostility.
Women’s Day reminds us of what was lost and what has been regained, but it also warns us of complacency. The future belongs not to “men” or “women,” but to those who transcend these binaries and live as partners in the shared story of human dignity.
M. H. A. Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir.
First published in www.newageislam.com
