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.