You've Come a Long Way, Baby

 K, I don't know who needs to hear this, but International Women's' Day is a SOCIALIST day. It's not a feel-good celebration of how cool women are. It's about the rights of women and how they have been and continue to be denied for women around the world. Girls that can't go to school. Women who don't get promoted because they put family first. Women who aren't allowed out in public without a man. Women who don't get paid the same as men. Women who afraid to run for office because of misogyny. 

All day today I have seen posts like "Here's my daughter, I am so proud of her." or "Here's my mom, I loved her so much". 

Yeah, ok. 

Cool.

I love my daughters. 

I loved my mom and my grandmothers. 

it's good to celebrate the sisterhood we feel with other women.

But let's think about what this day is supposed to be about. 

International Women's' Day was established by the Socialist Party of America as National Women's' Day in the US in 1909. It expanded to Europe the next year and became International Women's' Day in 1911. The Russians took up the cause in 1913. In those years, it was closely tied to demands for universal suffrage for women as well as demands for equal pay, the right to run for public office, improved working conditions and equal rights for women. 

Women have fought for their rights in Canada and around the world for generations. There have been many gains but the battle is far from done. We can't just sit around being all proud of being female. We need to keep up the fight.

Grandmother Marion, back row on the far left.

Granny Muriel Fryer

In my own family, my maternal grandmother Jane Marion McNaught was accepted into nursing school but instead followed her family to northern Alberta where she taught school and married, then worked in a munitions factory in the UK before she was legally allowed to vote. My paternal grandmother Muriel Frances Fryer came from England to Canada where she became a nurse and matron of a hospital before she could vote. She went on to give birth to seven children and ran a soup kitchen out of her Vancouver home during the Depression. Following the death of her husband, she lied about her age so she could keep nursing. 

My mom was an excellent student who wanted to be an accountant but was told "that's a man's job." Three university degrees later, she was a teacher in small town Alberta. 

Mom getting her Bachelor of Commerce degree.

They were happy and fulfilled women, but who knows who they might have become if barriers to their dreams were not put in their way because of their gender? Who knows what they might have contributed to society?

We have two daughters. One holds a PhD from Cambridge and works for Oxford University. The other is a geophysicist with a Masters degree who lives and works as a scientist in Victoria BC. They are smart, hard working and successful. The opportunities they have had are far better than those of their grandmother and great grandmothers. But I would be lying if I said there have not been hurdles to their success based on the fact they are women. 

I wrote about all of this before. But now I see what seems to be happening with this day, and I'm getting a bit annoyed. Are people just not getting the point?

Who else remembers Virginia Slims? A cigarette marketed to women. Their ads co-opted the women's civil rights movement in the US by equating a woman's right to smoke to the civil rights women had attained through concerted effort and protest. Will International Women's Day go the same way? Just some watered down day celebrating women in a generic feel-good way? If that's all it is, what is the point?

Generations of women have struggled and fought to gain equality with men. In Canada, we have come a long way, much further than places like Afghanistan. But there are still miles to go, brothers and sisters. Miles to go before we reach true equality around the world.

The world is hard. There are barriers everywhere that prevent people from reaching their potential. International Women's Day is one way we can promote the issues facing women by not just celebrating their achievements but also acknowledging the struggles women face around the world.  By joining in the fight for all people. Let's not diminish these very real issues by making it a meaningless Hallmark holiday.

Little Women

I watched the movie "Little Women" a few weeks ago in the fabulous Rex Theatre in Slave Lake. It is a great movie that illustrates the struggles women have gone through for generations in their attempts for equality.

My paternal grandmother was matron of a hospital in 1914. By my count she was in her mid-20s at the time (she lied about her date of birth a few times so she could keep working past mandatory retirement age). My other grandmother was admitted to nursing school but didn’t go because her family left Ontario to pioneer in the Peace Country and she went with them.  She was fascinated by medicine and the veterinary sciences. My great aunts all became teachers but they had many other skills and talents in art, photography, farming, and the biological sciences-who knows what they would have done if they had been born in a different era? I’m sure my maternal grandmother would have been a vet and Granny Hartford ? Maybe she would have ended up managing a corporation the same way she managed her lively household. They were in no way "little woman." They were fierce in their own ways. They were smart, opinionated and enterprising. And they were role models for the next generation of females in their families.

Granny Hartford,front and centre

My mom graduated from high school at age 16. She got a commerce degree and then was told there were no jobs for women in that field. She became a teacher, guidance counsellor, got a Masters degree, then became a wife, mother, and community organizer. She used her talents in many ways but I heard her say more than once that she wondered what her life would have been like if she had been able to pursue a career in marketing. She marketed the non-profits she belonged to like a pro.

Mom on her graduation from University

My mom and dad both wanted me to pursue a career in science. I didn’t think I had the aptitude so I too followed a traditional women’s career as a teacher. I don’t know why I thought I wouldn’t be good in the sciences. I wonder if my education had something to do with it. Were there subtle or less-than-subtle hints that I wasn’t smart enough?  My report cards-stowed away for me by my packrat mom- indicate my teachers thought I was great in the humanities, but lacked the critical thinking needed for the sciences.

My own two girls have not pursued anything in the way of traditional women’s work. One has a degree in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Biotechnology. The other is a geophysicist who worked in oil and gas for several years in a male dominated environment and is currently studying climate modelling. They were encouraged in these pursuits by their dad and me and their grandparents and their small-town public school teachers. Have they experienced discrimination because they are girls? Absolutely. As a summer student working for a survey company, my eldest often was left in the office while the male student went out in the field. The other? There are not a lot of women in oil and gas. She knows what discrimination is. However women in the industry have their own network to support each other. They’ve both learned when and how to assert themselves and when to stay quiet. When to fight it out and when to pack it in. How to develop allies. Mostly, how to work and work and work. It’s not a level playing field but they are smart, enterprising, and hardworking. And I hope they have more confidence in themselves than I did.

The world has changed a lot since Granny Hartford was matron of the Weyburn Hospital. It’s changed since my mom was denied a chance to use her creativity and drive in the field of her choice. It’s changed since the days of my schooling where I was told I “failed to grasp the concept of variables”.  Because I do fully grasp that concept. There are a million variables that influence not just the result of science experiments, but also where we live, how we live, and the opportunities that lie in front of us.  

There are still parts of the world where women are denied their full potential.  I would like to think that Canada is not one of those places, but here in Alberta there is still inequality. We see recommendations that certain services to women are considered of “limited value” despite the fact that tubal ligations and breast reductions are life changing for many women. Yet vasectomies are not mentioned. It's hard not to disagree with my friend Stacy when she says the government wants to keep women big breasted and pregnant. As well, Alberta has the largest pay gap in Canada between men and women- about 40% according to the Alberta government. Women are more likely to work in minimum wage jobs and are far more likely to live in poverty. Misogyny is alive and well as anyone following the nasty comments directed at former Premier Notley and former environment minister Shannon Phillips demonstrate. Or the ongoing attacks on the traditionally female-dominated professions of nursing and teaching.

Louisa May Alcott and her sisters might have been considered "little women" but due to women like my grandmothers, today's girls can be much more than that. Thanks to the passion and drive of today’s young women, I know improvements will continue. It is sad that we need a day to reflect on what it is to be a woman, but we do. We still have a lot of work ahead of us. 

Happy Women’s Day, ladies!