Tuesday was International Women’s Day.
I know this not because I marked it in my calendar in advance or because of any anticipatory conversations I’ve had with the international women in my life. I know because of the advertising emails I’ve received from Target, Adobe, Capital One and the like, reminding me that the best way to celebrate is to take part in their exclusive offers.
What is International Women’s Day ― or its corresponding history month, for that matter? What does it provide the world, besides identity-based marketing opportunities (always such a treat to behold)?
Does it provide education, a sense of historical context? Does it promote policy or shine a light on important issues? Does it seek to empower future generations? Is it feminist, humanist, misandrist, socialist, anything-ist?
In my observation, education seems to be a priority during History Month. In its most rudimentary application, you can bet most libraries in the country have a display in the lobby of books by or about prominent women. That seems pleasant enough. I also assume many teachers have added more women-centric lessons to their March curriculum. This is where we run into diminishing returns.
When we relegate our attention, our appreciation and our study of women to 31 days, we run a severe risk of tokenizing half the human population. The fact that women have only relatively recently been allowed into professional spaces in large numbers is an unfortunate and indeed shameful aspect of our history. Not women’s history. Our history.
Furthermore, when a woman succeeds, her success is a fact. When you apply the lens of womanhood over her success, that fact becomes a relativity, or something that only exists in comparison to the successes of men. It’s kind of hard not to see International Women’s Day any differently.
Looking at International Women’s Day, and using a policy-oriented focus, the “international” aspect starts to get a little shaky. A March 8 article contributed by Wera Hobhouse MP to the U.K.’s politicshome.com congratulated the nation’s female-majority Parliament on nine new bills seeking to expand quality of life for women. However, on the first day of our very own History Month, The Guardian’s Nigeria office reported that three gender-equity bills were struck down by the country’s lower Parliament. (The decision was later reversed, after Nigerian women descended on the capital for “the mother of all protests.”) The weight these holidays carry seems to depend on which nation we’re talking about.
In women’s studies, second-wave feminism, and garden-variety Facebook liberalism there exists a blind spot: We tend to think that every member of a marginalized group suffers from the same type of oppression.
Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem thought that women’s hopes and dreams lay in the office, where they could get equal pay for equal work and affordable child care and someone to water their plants. Meanwhile, not everyone is a member of the predominantly-white middle class.
Similarly, not every International Woman wants or needs the same things. Needs range from the immediate to the more diffuse, depending on country, class, skin color, religion, region, occupation, and so on. International womanhood is an absurdly large cohort of people, which makes it almost impossible to discuss policy in a meaningful way.
And how about those future generations, eh? Well, nobody asked me, but since I myself am an International Woman, allow me to share my personal vision:
I want to teach future generations that women are people. As a population, it’s true that our needs are not fully met and we are often denied our rights. But we are not a cause to be pitied, nor are we a discrete interest group to be marketed toward. We didn’t get invented sometime in the mid-20th century when we started burning our bras and running for office. We’re not a refraction of the female bodies used to sell beer and cars and lipstick. We’re not your mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends and daughters. We’re women. Actually, we’re people.
Happy International People’s Day.
