The world celebrated International Women’s Day yesterday - 8th March. A question may arise - How far has the status of women changed in modern and post-modern times?

The position of women has changed a lot in modern times. Clearly women have made tremendous strides towards equality in recent decades however; we still live in a society in which the worth of women is measured in their physical appearance and not their intellectual contribution or talents.

It is not an unknown secret that many women are paid considerably less than men for doing the same type of work. What effect does this obvious gap between men and women have on our nation’s female population? The effect of this is the unconscious perpetuation of the understanding that women are inferior to men in our society.

This also stands in direct contradiction to the claim that we are all created equal. This gap between men and women can be seen in countless social arenas, such as, the workplace, the average household, educational institutions and even in our nation’s government.

In the society, the role of women is getting bigger. Women are doing man’s work and sometimes women do it better. It may be because women are more patient and more intelligent. The concept of earlier days was that only man can work, because society thought that cleaning the house and taking care of the children were the only things women were able to do.

This has changed a lot because now both, men and women, are working and taking care of home. Sometimes it is the woman who gets the money to survive and man is the one who takes cares of the children, and while it was embarrassing for men in the past, now it is normal.

We have seen a woman P.M. in our country - one of the most powerful and undoubtedly the most efficient P.M.s we ever had - Mrs. Indira Gandhi. We also see a woman President - Mrs. Pratibha Patel. So a woman has the capability to hold the highest post of the country as well.

Be it in politics (Jayalalitha, Mamta Banerjee, Mayawati - love them, hate them, but you cannot ignore them), sports, cinema or literary field, we see women dominating the scene side-by-side with men.

Hence the position of women has changed drastically in post independent India. The condition in the rural areas which has more or less remain unchanged (as portrayed in soaps like Balika Vadhu & Na Aana is Desh Laado)are exceptions to this changing scenario.