International Women’s Day

In 1909 the United States recognized the last day of February as National Women’s day. This day was established as a result of women workers’ protesting working conditions in the garment industry with a strike in New York. From that year forward women in regions around the world began pushing for recognition of their strides in society. The following year in Copenhagen, Denmark during a Socialist International meeting the first three women were elected to the Finnish Parliament and the women’s right movement began in pursuit of universal suffrage for women. In The Copenhagen initiative ignited a fire that spread over the region and by 1911 International Women’s Day was established in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies demanding women’s right to vote, hold public office and work, calling an end to job discrimination. This momentum continued into the Peace Movement in 1914 where International Women’s Day became the platform for protesting WW1 and through using the momentum of war protests women in Russia strikes for “Bread and Peace”, succeeding days later as the Czar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. Later in 1975, during International Women’s year the United Nations began celebrating March 8 for recognition for International Women’s Day, a day that celebrated the achievements of women and the promotion of women’s rights worldwide.

There’s a reason why we must reserve a space to shine a light on women’s achievements, far more often than not the strides of women in society are overlooked. The woman is still not liberated and this is our reality. We’re still not able to live an uninhibited life, unfettered by restriction  and that keeps a lot of us from living the lives that we desire. Sadly even with these strides in equality our society still holds a predatory culture towards women of all ages, races and sexual orientation. In conversation with my friend, Lacino Hamilton (imprisoned in Marquette Branch Prison), he explained to me the problem with the media that feeds this predatory culture, “no analysis or commentary exploring the pervasive nature of gender inequality woven throughout social institutions…The fusion of institutional and systematic harassment, misogyny, patriarchy, rape, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that shade most aspects of life in our society.” Gender inequality is woven into our culture because it protects the patriarchy and its effects are dangerous. The way that society is shaped around raising women to be submissive and men to be dominate is not a ‘natural’ product of biological difference in men and women, which is what many of us have been taught to believe. Rather, this idea that women are to be submissive and docile is a function of the society attempt to control the means reproduction, all persons with a vagina. The power to reproduce is held by a women and that power can only be shifted if women are led to believe that it’s dependent on a man We’re taught that we must be controlled, protected, dominated, sought after and any woman who operates contrary to this is labeled negatively as loud, wild, bitchy etc. by society. These are labels that are casted in order to tame us and keep us in our place.

Women have been realizing that this structure isn’t natural, we’ve fought back through legal systems making strides in the supreme court as well as through education with Black women being the leader in attaining degrees of higher education. We’ve taken on the courage to learn more than what the mainstream is willing to teach in realizing that primary education is a function of the pervasive culture that breeds submissive and docile women. I’ve attended the Women’s March where conflicting arguments stated that although women were being celebrated, that was being done on the backs of less fortunate women, there is an obvious color barrier. We must not forget that in our march towards equality we cannot leave anyone behind, there still women who are barred from receiving an education and not allowed to choose not to marry or not to have children, who are socialized from living in their own right at their own pace. Even around us there are women who live afraid to live alone, walk to the park or travel because of the predatory culture we’re forced to live in. Our lives are limited in ways that we don’t even recognize, like a fish we cannot see the water that surrounds them incidence of violence and discrimination surround us. This is why it has been my personal goal to live a life that young girls can see and know that it is possible to attain an education beyond the mainstream, own a business unassisted and travel unrestrained. There is no reason why the gift that you’ve been blessed with to bring life should keep you from living yours.

Some of the many issues of I’ve covered in relation to female strides in world history

Happy International Women’s Day.