Note From President Shernaz Vakil
REVERSE DISCRIMINATION!
It’s interesting and heartening to see the amount of support and effort that is going into gender equality these days.
In this morning’s paper, I read an advertisement by a washing powder company extolling other advertisers to communicate equality at home by showcasing housework as not just a woman’s job. In other words, the necessity to turn an unequal past to an equal future, a movement towards equality.
Then there was the Burger King advertisement saying: women belong in the kitchen… and then going on to explain that they were attempting to bring more women into the restaurant industry to pursue a culinary career.
Funnily enough, at our Rotary Club, we faced a situation of reverse discrimination. In other words, we were accused of being unfair! A project that we introduced for the nutrition of the girl child took the Vaidu community by surprise. Why were the young boys being left out?
We had to then explain that a young girl goes on to become a mother and her nutrition is key to giving birth to a healthy child. In fact, a lot of the paediatric heart surgeries that we perform on babies and very young children result from the malnutrition of the mother.
If we could ensure that young girls and women are given a well-balanced diet before and during the child-bearing years, the babies born to them would not have the serious heart ailments we see all over India today.
So, at the Vaidu community, every month we monitor the height and weight of the girls that we provide with nutritious
meals.
It is so heartening to see how within a month they put on a couple of kilos and how month by month they grow to be healthier and stronger.
I believe this initiative if continued and supported in the long run will create a community of young women where babies born to them will be stronger and healthier and, perhaps, not need the paediatric heart interventions we sponsor every month.
The initiatives we take to support women and children will certainly result in a wellbalanced community where the role of the wife and mother is understood to be paramount to the sustainability of the family.
We are slowly moving forward towards this equality and the difference can be seen, from the kitchen to the board room!
— President Shernaz Vakil