The speakers at various events organised in Tirupati commemorating International Women’s Day on Sunday lavished praise on the fairer sex for their tightrope walk in balancing family and professional lives.
At a meeting organised at TTD’s Annamacharya Kalamandiram, Y.V. Swarnalatha Reddy, wife of trust board Chairman Y.V. Subba Reddy, said the world should observe every day as a ‘Women’s Day’, in view of their services. “Women in India enjoyed equal rights in Vedic period before the introduction of patriarchal approach in the latter years by a series of foreign invasions,” she observed.
SPMVV Vice-Chancellor Duvvuru Jamuna saw the need for a bigger fight for women’s empowerment in view of the rise in atrocities against women. Veteran gynaecologist Rama Lakshmi expressed concern over the continuation of female foeticide in the contemporary times, even when the ratio got skewed to 935 girls for every 1000 boys.
Opportunities in IT
The Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Sri City) observed the day on the theme ‘Women in Data Science’ and ‘Women Entrepreneurship’. Madalasa Venkataraman, Director (data science) at Oracle called upon the students to make use of opportunities and bag the jobs available in the sector. She also listed out the skill sets and competencies required. Mathangi Sri, data head at Gojek, rated among the top 10 data scientists in the country, explained convergence of data science and AI and machine learning.
Prarthana Bhat, senior data scientist at Progress Bengaluru spoke. Similarly, Silpa Lingareddy, founder of Engage Packaging, traced her entrepreneurship journey, while Sphurthy Parvathaneni, CEO of Sphurthy Eco Systems, spoke on potential schemes and funding opportunities for women innovators.
Collector Bharat N. Gupta joined the celebrations at SVIMS University and called upon the girl students to break the glass ceiling to move up in career. He hailed them for breaching the male bastion, even while fulfilling their duties on the family front. At a programme organised by the Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhyudaya Samakhya (APMAS) and Sri Padmavathi Women’s University, Fourth Additional District Judge Rama Gopal said discrimination continued due to lack of awareness, in spite of the Constitution providing equal rights and disallowing discrimination in the name of caste, religion and gender.
