Friday, March 8, 2019

Happy International Women's Day!

International Women's Day has never been much of a "thing" in Canada or the United States. I only started taking note of it maybe a decade ago, when my company started making a bit of a fuss about it.  IWD was more of a "thing" in our international locations, initially -- and I suspect the powers that be seized on it as and expanded our activities as a way to shore up their credentials as an "employer of choice" for women. There would be stories in the staff newsmagazine and internal online communications, perhaps a special guest speaker for the women's network group (which was, unhappily, only open to those at the management level & above -- meaning I never got to go), and donations to charities that benefited women & girls.

I never thought or wondered much about why IWD wasn't celebrated as much in North America vs the rest of the world -- or why Mother's Day is so feted here, but not quite as big a deal elsewhere -- until I read this article from today's New York Times. (In short, the reason is political.)  Eye-opening, to say the least. They had me at the subheading: 
Forget Mother’s Day. Today we celebrate women as friends, sisters, workers and comrades, too.
And this paragraph: 
For my part, I despise that Mother’s Day values women only as mothers. It reinforces the idea that this is our most important role: giving birth and sacrificing enormous amounts of unpaid labor toward raising the next generation of citizens. We are more than our wombs.
Some have tried to tell me that Mother's Day celebrates ALL women who nurture & encourage the next generation. Hmmmm, nice try, but I don't entirely buy it.  (Maybe it SHOULD be that way, but it doesn't always work out that way.) 

But IWD is (or should be) about ALL women, and all that we are -- not just our roles as mothers & caretakers.

(I wrote an IWD post last year along these lines.)

3 comments:

  1. I read that same article too and I feel that Mothering Sunday is going the same way here as well in the UK... it's like everyone gets hyped up about it to a frenzy... I resent these 'Hallmark holidays' anyway... not that I don't think anyone should not honour their mother, they should do so, but don't let corporations and governments and greed define the one day you should 'do' this!

    Plus it's very isolating all this 'family' celebratory days we seem to have now... I literally cannot participate in any of them and when people ask me if I'd had a nice weekend and what did I do? For me to say 'nothing' is met with blank looks and incredulous amazement - yet I know I'm not the only person in the world without a family for goodness sakes!

    Yes, let's make International Womens Day about WOMEN regardless of their procreativity - we ARE so much more than our reproductive parts!

    Thank you for an enlightening post xx

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  2. I love this, Loribeth. I love your commentary and the article. You inspired me to write a post on A Separate Life. Mother's Day is so exclusionary. Women's Day is about all women. And so for me, feels filled with love.

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  3. I'd never heard of International Women's Day until a year or two ago (I'm in the US). That's an eye opening article. I love the idea of celebrating all women for their accomplishments and contributions. I also really love the idea of getting away from celebrating based on family status. I agree that Mother's Day does not really celebrate all women. Further, even if - theoretically - it did celebrate all women for nurturing/encouraging the next generation, I love the idea of getting away from the categorization of women as maternal/nurturing and that being women's overwhelming or sole contribution to life. International Women's Day sounds like a much more inclusive celebration that praises the full spectrum of women's achievement - from science to writing to work in many fields.

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