NEW DELHI: Every year on March 8, to commemorate resilience and sturdy spirit of women, International Women’s day is celebrated. The day is also celebrated to make efforts aiming to facilitate women empowerment, and it reflects from the fact that the theme of the year 2021 is ‘Women in leadership achieving an equal future in Covid-19 world’.
Despite the lingering subjugation imposed upon them by society, women have been participating in competitive sports for centuries. However, for the first time, it was in XXI Commonwealth games that sports events were held on the basis of complete gender equality, and equal number of events for men and women were fixed.
Physiological differences do not limit women. The positive effects of an active lifestyle and sports pursuits benefit men and women similarly. Women’s participation was encouraged in both sports and in administration at international Olympics committee to decrease demographic gap between men and women playing sports, and pursuing other activities under the banner.
As far as accomplishments of Indian sportswomen are concerned, they are not less in number. India has just 26 medals in its diversified Olympic history—between 1928 (Amsterdam) and 2016 (Rio), and five of the 26 medals have come from women. Karnam Malleshwari was the first to win an Olympic medal and in 2016, PV Sindhu became the first ever Indian shuttler to win Olympics silver medal. At London Olympics 2012, Saina Nehwal became the first Indian to win an Olympic bronze.
In the 2014 Asian Games, Indian women players pushed the men on the back foot and claimed about half of the total medals. Moreover, Indian sportswomen brought laurels to the country when they won a plenty of medals at 2018 Commonwealth Games (13 gold, 11 silver, and 7 bronze medals).
In 2016 at the Rio Olympic Games, the percentage of women participating was higher than ever, 45 percent of the total competitors being women. That’s more than double the figure from 1976 past four decades ago.
Five women players, including the mountaineers, so far, have been awarded the Padma Bhushan. Bachendri Pal was the first to climb Everest. And Mary Kom was the first Indian ever to win an international medal in boxing and first Indian boxer to win an Olympics medal. Sania Mirza, in 2005, became the first Indian to win a woman’s double title at the US Open title.
P.V. Sindhu won a silver medal in the women’s singles event at the 2016 Rio Olympics. From global championships, Sindhu has five medals in her bag: two bronze, two silver, and one gold. Indian women have been making the country proud, and are rising above the horizons every passing day.
The writer is a former Associate Professor, Delhi University. Views are his personal.