I wrote here two years ago that it was, perhaps, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, but repeated the same claim last year. Yet all the newspapers and website are full with claiming that the anniversary is today. Never mind. I probably didn’t have the patience in 2009 and 2010 to wait until 2011. Here we are.
There’s quite a lot of attention to IWD here in the Netherlands today. The question why we still need it has luckily not been so prominent this year. This is a nice surprise, since I remember having seen asked this question on the 8th of March for the last… euh.. ten years or so (that is, as long as my memory serves me). I had an interview with a radio journalist early this morning and had prepared for that question, but she asked different ones. My answer would have been: we still need women’s day as long as women are not treated as equals to men, and both are treated with respect and dignity – but that also implies that, at least in some parts of the world but possibly in most parts of the world, we may need International Men’s Day too, since men who do not embrace dominant masculinities have a hard time in some areas too (child custody in some countries; birth leave in several EU countries, for example). If International Men’s Day were to contribute to thoughtful reflections on masculinities, it may well be a contributing to the liberation of some men, and definitely be welcomed by feminist/egalitarian women too. And it may also be a good thing for gay people, if the widespread account that homophobia is in (large) part driven by anxieties over masculinities is true.
I’m always curious to hear what people did on IWD (and recall from last year that some of you buy roses for your wife/girlfriend, which is definitely not the kind of political activities associated with IWD here in Western Europe). I ‘worked hard’ this year: on Sunday I was in a debate on the combination of care and paid work (and what policies are needed) in Amsterdam, and today I joined 6 other students and professors to stage the docu-play Seven, which recounts the true stories of seven amazing women leaders from across the world, who have been strong and inspirational against the odds (since most of them suffered a lot of abuse and violence). As a genuine actress-for-one-day I came home with a bunch of pink flowers, to the great delight of my five year old, who has pink as his favorite color. Happy International Women’s Day!
{ 16 comments }
tomslee 03.08.11 at 9:48 pm
The question why we still need it has luckily not been so prominent this year.
I would say the same is true here in Canada. Also surprisingly.
I’m always curious to hear what people did on IWD
Embarrassingly, all I’ve done is to tweet some follow recommendations – how’s that for slacktivism of the shallowest kind?
sean matthews 03.08.11 at 10:20 pm
‘…and recall from last year that some of you buy roses for your wife/girlfriend, which is definitely not the kind of political activities associated with IWD here in Western Europe’
Beg to differ. There were people from Ver.di handing out roses to anybody vaguely female-looking in the foyer of Heleba in Frankfurt this morning. Kinda crass, I thought. Brought back memories for my wife of pre-1989 Hungary.
stostosto 03.08.11 at 10:27 pm
I’m always curious to hear what people did on IWD
I said congratulations to my wife this morning, and she reciprocated.
Later, on my way home from work, I passed a feminist demonstration and listened to one of their speeches, but left when they started singing.
Substance McGravitas 03.08.11 at 10:31 pm
I took my eight-year old to march in a parade, which she was bummed about, but after she did the whole thing she was proud. Also we pretended IWD was on Saturday because that’s when the parade happened.
eilis 03.09.11 at 12:46 am
Beyond the usual working activities, I attended an event in Dublin on ‘Women in politics’ with reps from the main political parties. Debate mainly centred around whether or not quotas was the right solution to Ireland’s standing at 79th globally in terms of women’s representation in politics. What struck me was the clear left/right divide in terms of which women, and female elected politicians, are in favour of quotas.
One of the two men in attendance asked about the need for male engagement in the women’s participation debates, and his questions was vaguely welcomed, but with no real plans for action – unfortunate …
mise 03.09.11 at 12:47 am
Beyond the usual working activities, I attended an event in Dublin on ‘Women in politics’ with reps from the main political parties. Debate mainly centred around whether or not quotas was the right solution to Ireland’s standing at 79th globally in terms of women’s representation in politics. What struck me was the clear left/right divide in terms of which women, and female elected politicians, are in favour of quotas.
One of the two men in attendance asked about the need for male engagement in the women’s participation debates, and his questions was vaguely welcomed, but with no real plans for action – unfortunate …
Emma in Sydney 03.09.11 at 1:13 am
I attended a seminar celebrating the 100 years of IWD, which consisted of papers analysing why it’s arguable that the origins were in 1907, 1909, 1910 and 1911, which was fun. The best paper was about the first celebration of IWD in Sydney in 1928, when a bunch of excellent Communist women from the Militant Women’s Group held a 2-hour rally in a city park, and spoke about the need for equal pay, childcare and shorter hours for working women, and economic equality. Plus ca change…
RedCharlie 03.09.11 at 3:04 am
Is it just me, or should International Women’s day and Fat Tuesday not be allowed to occur on the same day?
Matt 03.09.11 at 4:19 am
I did very normal Russian things for International Women’s Day with my wife (who is Russian) which is basically to treat it as the functional equivalent of valentine’s day. There’s a roughly functional equivalent day for men in Russia, Feb. 23rd, which used to be “Red Army Day” but it’s now “Defenders of the Fatherland” day or something like that.
Ingrid Robeyns 03.09.11 at 5:51 am
@eilis/mise (5/6): interesting to hear that the discussion is about quota in politics. In the Netherlands, one of the hot issues is about quota for the top of businesses, and of course the never-ending and always-repeating debates about long waiting lists for child care, the quality of child care, the length of school days etc. – all these things which make it difficult for mothers (and in theory fathers potentially too) to hold a 30hours+ job.
John Quiggin 03.09.11 at 6:48 am
The quota issue came up here in Australia in relation to corporate boards. The Financial Review editorialised that quotas are inevitable in the light of near-zero progress without them (current proportion is 8pm).
Not sure that this is the most important issue of the day, given that it will probably only affect a few hundred firms – maybe a thousand board positions, but I guess it’s one that can be tackled.
Myles 03.09.11 at 7:45 am
I wish they wouldn’t bother so much with the composition of corporate boards. It’s not that more women shouldn’t be on boards: it’s simply that individual companies in wealthy Anglophone countries are less socially encroaching and significant organizations in people’s individual lives. European board composition reforms are reflective of this comparative differences in role magnitude.
I recall reading of a Norwegian (might be Swedish?) business-owner who was very glad to be paying for welfare society; what struck me then (and still does now) is how he said that, to paraphrase, “all his friends are in the company; he has no friends outside it.” To us this is unimaginable, and it was revealing.
niamh 03.09.11 at 8:43 am
Daniel Craig and Judi Dench do their bit here to challenge complacency:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/07/james-bond-video-womens-day?INTCMP=SRCH
But somehow I can’t see the Bond fans taking their man in drag all that seriously…
Tomboktu 03.09.11 at 9:18 pm
To do their bits, the new Irish leaders today appointed two women out of 15 cabinet ministers, and gave the the portfolios for children and for social protection (the kids and the pin money).
Well done, boys.
stearm 03.09.11 at 10:28 pm
I am a man and I celebrate IWD in honor of all the women, but also the men, who fought to eliminate discrimination against women in the workplaces, in the ballot box, in the families and in the society at large. Many people died to achieve a more equal society, the one in which we live, the one in which our mothers, wifes, daughters, and friends live in. So don’t take equal rights for granted, someone has fought, has risked their lives, has died to let us enjoy equal rights. Let us celebrate these people over and over again because they deserve it and let us defend those rights against the enemies of freedom, liberty, and justice.
Niamh 03.10.11 at 12:48 pm
How readily can we disentangle sexual politics from personality politics?
The big surprise in Ireland’s new Fine Gael-Labour cabinet is that Joan Burton, deputy leader of Labour and Finance spokesperson for many years, did not get one of the two top Finance jobs.
(She gets Social Protection; Frances Fitzgerald (FG) gets Children. The Attorney-General is a woman too. That’s all.)
See here – http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/2011/cabinet/index.pdf
How did this happen?
It is rumoured that the top Fine Gael people find Burton hard to get along with.
They are said to be more comfortable with Labour former minister Brendan Howlin, who gets the new Finance job, ‘Public Expenditure and Reform’. They are even said to find Burton – yes – ‘strident’.
But if Fine Gael set the terms, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore signed up to them.
The government faces an appallingly difficult few years, and party-political divisions in key positions would not be to anyone’s advantage. But this does look bad. In the last parliament, Ireland tied joint 85th place (with Cameroon) for women’s representation in parliament, at 13.9% –
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
Joan Burton is not the only disappointed senior person: in a coalition government, the spoils can only be divided out so far. See here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0310/1224291778664.html
But she is probably the most high-profile person to lose out, and the fraught gender issues rub it in.
Irish women need to go forward for election in larger numbers; selection committees need to nominate them in larger numbers; and more generally, Irish public space needs to get used to the whole variety of types of voices and personalities among women just as among men. There is a long way to go.
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