International Women’s Day: a personal perspective

International Women’s Day has been around since the early 1900s, celebrating the role and importance of women around the world. One the highlights is seeing the positive and inspirational coverage of women around the world. But my personal favourite will always be my grandmother’s story.

Born to a liberal and forward-looking family in Gujarat, India, she broke all the moulds about what women were and weren’t supposed to do. She was a well-rounded young woman, interested in riding horses and possessed a sharp intelligence. Her father recognised this, and permitted her to go to a different state in India to study Sanskrit at university-level, a momentous decision at the time. When she eventually met my grandfather (who was not university educated), she was a catalyst in ensuring that her children and grandchildren, were well-educated. It was her constant support and sacrifice that enabled my father, aunt and uncle to achieve academic success despite fleeing the country halfway through their schooling under the rule of Idi Amin in Uganda.

I’ve spent a few years, quite literally, trying to follow in her footsteps. In 2009, I spent two months volunteering in rural Uganda and in 2014, exploring community responses to social issues in India from barefoot education to slum support networks. These trips were designed to take me back to the places I had roots, and to try to get a hint of how lives are lived.

What I found were more examples of inspirational women. Not the ones celebrated by the UN, or on the Gates Foundation websites, but women who are working silently to break rules and make the world a better place for the next generation. From a woman who left her family to develop women-led enterprises in slums, to activists trying to change education for the better.

It seems inspirational women are everywhere. You just have to look.