Women who stay at home contribute equally to India’s growth: Smriti Irani

Union minister for women and child development Smriti Irani said on Friday the conversation about women’s success centres only around those who are engaged in professional work. “When we appreciate a successful woman who gets out of the house, we should not ignore a woman who chooses to stay at home on her own free will. Such women also have an important contribution to the development of the country,” said Irani.

Irani was speaking about ‘Women Power in Democracy', at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi. She also said that any talk on women power in a democracy only emphasises women serving in Parliament overlooking all the others engaged in different fields, who she said are contributors at the grassroots level.

The minister cited an example from her life to pointed out that her ‘thinking, passion, and aspiration’ helped her achieve her goals. “I was raised in Gurugram, Haryana. At that time, if I had said that a girl born in a ‘tabela’ would cover the distance of 20km from Gurugram to Delhi in 40 years, people would have laughed at me. But I was confident that my thinking, passion, and aspiration could not stop a city boundary. I never saw the difficulties coming in the way as an obstacle. I saw this as a creative opportunity to find a solution,” she said.

Talking about International Women’s Day on March 8, Irani stated that a woman’s struggles are not limited to just one day of the year therefore she should be celebrated throughout the year.

Irani was delivering the ‘Friday Dialogue’ in IIMC, in the presence of director general Sanjay Dwivedi, students and the faculty. The address was a virtual interactive session where the minister also took questions.