This article is part of the #ChooseToChallenge campaign by Hashnode.

If you are an Indian, you would have heard this phrase a-lot many times that अरे तूम तो लड़की हो क्या ही कर लो गए (You are just a girl what worth remembering you can do)

Weird right? Why are people so hung up on these taboos? I will never understand!

We live in a world where women, capable of giving birth to new life and having to undergo tremendous pain every month during their periods are still proclaimed physically weak.

We live in a culture where parents choose their male child superior to the female one and still the latter would never hold any grudge and would never consider herself mentally weak.

We live in a society where any achievements by men are considered as a reflection of their hard work while when the same happens to women, it is prematurely ruled out as sheer luck.

A woman is always considered an underdog no matter what she does and how she does.

I have also experienced the same in my life. I work in the IT industry, an industry where people should not discriminate between a male and a female candidate on the basis of gender because at the end of the day both of them have to just write code. And from an end user perspective, nobody can actually identify if the code was written by a male or female. But the harsh reality is that people do.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a brief example.

Back in 2019, I still remember the day when people were trying to form teams for the Smart India Hackathon (SIH), one of the prestigious hackathons hosted in India. It is mandatory that the teams formed have at least one female student in it.

And for the same, one of my community friends asked me if I was interested to take part in it. Having never participated in a hackathon earlier, but with a lot of courage and optimism I agreed to my friends request assuring him that I will put in my 100% efforts.

After 3 months of efforts - We became finalists for the SIH 2019.

Once I returned from SIH, one of my classmates alligated and spread a rumour that I became the finalist only because I was a female and that I would have never achieved this if I were a boy.

What was my fault in this - my gender or people's mindset?

Almost everyday, girls have to put extra efforts to standout at every stage of their life - be it in the family or at the school or at a work place.

Post the SIH incident, I promised myself that I would leave this world better than what I experienced.

The solution to all these problems is speaking up, standing for ourselves and challenging the perceptions, mindsets of individual until the society realises that these stereotypes are worthless.

This IWD2021, I #ChooseToChallenge all the stereotypes that consider women weak and have degraded women of their identity and worth.

This IWD2021, I pledge to help more people by being a proud woman in tech, educating, motivating them and rousing the inner belief to standout, perform and progress.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.