Respecting women is our ancient culture: Bhumana

Tirupati: Revering and respecting women is part of our ancient tradition and culture, said MLA Bhumana Karunakar Reddy while speaking at a 'Women's Day' celebration conducted by city-based NGO Rashtriya Seva Samithi (RASS) here on Saturday.

Karunakar Reddy said unfortunately the advent of Europeans brought many undesirable changes in the country including turning towards their culture and habits where women have no such unique respectable place like our age-old culture while the growing materialism resulted in viewing women as commercial objects.

Stating that the government besides executing various schemes for women also provided them 50 reservation way in local bodies to empower women, he said 40 years back itself RASS general secretary late G Muniratanm introduced thrift societies for women and also training programmes for self-employment to enable women to stand on their legs.

Mayor Dr R Sirisha said that gender equality should start from the family and their parents should see no discrimination among their children which would go a long way ending bias against women in the society.  RASS general secretary Venkata Ratnam spoke on various training programmes for women for their economic development including driving.

RASS joint secretary Mamatha and Director Nagaraju were present. The State Government Retired Employees Association also observed the Women's Day. Marking the occasion, 20 retired women employees including Jayalakshmi, Venkatalakshmi, Neeraja, Kasturi, Vatsala and others were felicitated.