Femina awards country's women achievers

Mumbai, March 20 (IANS) Mary Kom, Shabani Azmi, Nandita Das, Vidya Balan, Lisa Haydon and Sakshi Tanwar - such celebrated 'women of worth' of the country, and more were felicitated for their work done in their respective fields, at the L'Oreal Paris Femina Women Awards 2013 here.

The glitzy event took place Tuesday evening, and saw others like Sonam Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai in presence.

Actress Vidya Balan, who received an editor's choice award of 'Women We Love', said: "This is a celebration of me as woman. This award is special because it celebrates the essence of women. Women are now beginning to take centrestage and getting recognised."

The awards honoured women across 17 categories including science, business and entrepreneurship, sports, art, education, television and music.

"It's fantastic awarding women who are doing something different. That's important because they need to be recognised for what they do," said Sonam.

With power packed performances by Shubha Mudgal, The Diva Project - Manasi Scott, and an act from the critically acclaimed play "The Vagina Monologues", the ceremony brought alive the essence of womanhood in India.

The honours awards were given out under three main-categories - Reader's Choice, Editor's Choice and Jury Awards.

The winners were selected by an esteemed panel of judges that consisted of achievers like Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murthy, Bollywood director Gauri Shinde, costume designer Neeta Lulla, Meera Sanyal from the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, actress Seema Biswas, L'Oreal managing director Pierre-Yves Arzel and Femina editor Tanya Chaitanya.

Seema said it was tough to choose the best out of many deserving ones.

"It was very difficult to choose one of them. We hope we have done justice to them. As a jury member, it was a tough to choose one from so many deserving women."