Comments on: Belated Happy Birthday, International Women’s Day!

By: roland

roland — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:54:43 +0000

Should I have brought chocolates last Sunday?

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:11:37 +0000

Well, if you have a three year old as I do, then sometimes you do bake koekies. But I confess (a) that this happens only rarely, and (b) they look horrible, and they taste too sweet. But for the three year old it’s a great achievement and for all of us a joyful thing to do, especially when it rains.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:53:27 +0000

Ingrid, there was someone on TV last weekend who said that biscuits (at least in the Dutch meaning of the word) are nearly impossible to bake at home, because the dough requires industrial-strength mixers.

I don’t think I qualify as a real feminist, but I do bake koekjes myself, and sometimes bring them to work, where they are looked at with suspicion.

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:25:55 +0000

I didn’t think anyone home-baked koekjes, regardless of ideology!

Ingeburgerd as I am, I take Lidl koekjes to work for my verbirthdags (we never have koekjes in the house otherwise—the single-koekje as coffee-accessory is something we leave to the Hollanders, along with koffiemelk). And ingeburgerd as I am, the tea I mostly drink is oost-frisian served weak, black and in a glass (although we do have to go to Germany to stock up).

None of which constitutes a declination of either of your kind offers, though!

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:05:11 +0000

Des, if you come to Utrecht, I’ll serve you Real English Tea with a biscuit. I promise. Or I can bring you een koekje when I come to Groningen on May 13th to give a lecture in the philosophy department. Or do you think feminists wouldn’t serve tea and bake koekjes?

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:39:34 +0000

Well, Zamfir, that says more about the people you know than about what was happening in this country.

Bad Zamfir! No biscuit! And no biscuit for me, either, because I missed the Dutch Wimmins’ Dag too. Mrs Von Bladet was already op reis in Italy by then, but she also didn’t mention it last year or the year before.

I’m in no position to dispute that events were organised in Groningen, but lots of things happen in big cities without me being aware of them. (This is practically a definition of “big city”.)

By: rvman

rvman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:28:14 +0000

To be fair, we do have a Labor Day, first Monday in September, as a substitute for May Day, more or less literally. Our labor day was designated as the first Monday in September by Pres. Cleveland, the year after the Haymarket massacre in May, 1886, contaminated the first major celebration of the May 1 version. These days, May Day is more a pseudo-pagan thing than a labor thing in the US.

By: David in NY

David in NY — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:41:55 +0000

“Left out of this glorious paen to European socialism and feminism is the fact that IWD is originally a US holiday.”

Interesting. It seems to be a tradition in the US —inventing good holidays and ignoring them. The international labor or workers’ day, May 1, also originated in the US in 1886.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:32:22 +0000

But I have no illusions that most people don’t care at all about this topic, just as they don’t care about many other political issues or social inequalities.

It seems perfectly possible to me to care about the position of women in society, without caring about Women’s day :) But more seriously, I think there is something in magistra’s take, that shifting focus to care turns a men/women divide in a class divide, with working-class women taking over many care tasks from higher-class women, without really changing gender disbalance on the whole.

I fear especially that interest in care issues might disappear if the most influential 20% or so of the people can buy away most of their care issues.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:56:35 +0000

I attended the Million Women Rise march on Saturday – obviously timed each year to coincide as much as possible with International Women’s Day. I doubt it got much media attention, but there were a lot of people doing their usual shopping thing on Oxford Street, down which the march went, who might now occasionally think about it.

By: J. Otto Pohl

J. Otto Pohl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:32:36 +0000

Left out of this glorious paen to European socialism and feminism is the fact that IWD is originally a US holiday. It was first celebrated in the US in 1909. Only two years later in 1911 was it observed in Europe.

Although the date that IWD in the USSR ceased to have any real connection to women’s rights is debatable I suspect it was pretty early on. Certainly by the 1930s the Soviet government had little interest in real liberation ane equality for women. Interestingly enough Stalin chose to celebrate major holidays in 1943-1944 with the deportation of whole peoples. For IWD in 1944 he chose to deport the Balkars, earlier he had celebrated Red Army Day with the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush and New Years Eve with the deportation of the Kalmyks.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:13:38 +0000

Well, Zamfir, that says more about the people you know than about what was happening in this country. There were several events taking place on Sunday – I think every big city had one event. I was at an event with workshops and lectures in Utrecht, and with speeches by 3 major politicians (Koenders, Bussemakers and Verhagen) and it was quite informative with good discussions. International Women’s day is one of the few days during the year when one can debate issues to do with women’s and men’s position in society in a setting with other people (both men and women) who are intersted in these issues. But I have no illusions that most people don’t care at all about this topic, just as they don’t care about many other political issues or social inequalities. So be it.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:01:12 +0000

To be honest, the people I know in the Netherlands who care about Women’s day are flower grower who export to Russia, because it is one of their peak days.

By: James Conran

James Conran — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:13:33 +0000

“…once upon a time, in the USSR, women’s day must have been as political as it has perhaps never been in other parts of Europe. ”

It’s funny, because I became aware it was IWD from the radio just as I was learning (from Orlando Figges’ “A People’s Tragedy”) about how a women’s march for equal rights on IWD, 1917 played a central role in precipitating the February Revolution. (At first I was confused but then remembered the whole Gregorian calender thing).

By: magistra

magistra — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:43:48 +0000

If you start policy building on the basis of care, you face the immediate issue that care is an important task, which most people find unappealing to perform in large quantities, because it involves much work which is repetitive (dressing someone, talking to toddlers etc) and/or physically demanding/unpleasant (wiping bottoms, lifting people). I don’t see an easy way of getting round this central problem of the nature of the work. The traditional alternative has been to exalt the morality of carers (women, nurses etc), while paying them nothing ot next to nothing, but feminism has dealt that a serious blow, not least by giving women other work options. The capitalist alternative is to pay carers nothing or next to nothing while simultaneously denigrating them for their menial work (since they are unable to earn sufficiently to outsource caring tasks to someone further down the social hierarchy).