International Women’s Day
by DAISY THOMAS
For the last 110 years, women around the world celebrate International Women’s Day to commemorate the triumphs of yesteryear and the ongoing fight for women’s rights. Every year is themed and 2021 is no exception. This year’s theme, "Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a Covid-19 World" comes with its own hashtag #ChooseToChallenge, and is broken down on the International Women’s Day website, as the following:
“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let's all choose to challenge.”
All any of us have is our bodies, minds, and spirits, yet all three are abused on a global scale, various sectors finding ways to prey on insecurities and the hypernormalization of exploitative practices wrapped up in the violent arm of paternalism’s toxic masculinity. Women worldwide know this fight is long from over, showing up in the streets by the thousands, protesting, advocating, fighting for what’s ours.
Resistance to women’s equality this far into the 21st century is abhorrent and absurd, yet here we are in our never-ending fight challenging the comfortable yet problematic norms which continue to see women and our fight for equality used as political fodder rather than human rights. The barriers working women* face can be difficult to understand, let alone overcome, when they exist in every aspect of her life while those surrounding her try to convince her they don’t exist or that she’s being “dramatic” or “bossy” or “bitchy” rather than recognizing their own biases. And that’s in the “Land of the Free.”
Living life as a woman in Utah is oppressive. Living life as a woman in America is demanding. But living life as a woman leader in the world is a challenge few can understand. "When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men." The late Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman elected to US Congress, recognized the issues with paternalism, ringing true today as they did years ago.
So, to celebrate today in this post-2020 madness, #choosetochallenge. Challenge societal expectations that no longer align with your values, or never did, with humanity’s worth. Know yourself, even if it feels awkward or loser-y. It isn’t. Take the time to celebrate your rights, the miraculousness of your womanhood, and all your positive AND negative traits. Get to know those parts of yourself that you don’t like, that stay hidden until they’re no longer containable, so that together and wholeheartedly we can achieve that equal future of this year’s expectation.
And for good measure, check out this conversation, The Portal Series: Reflections on Feminist Leadership Through Crisis with Latanya Mapp Frett and Shruthi Jayaram.
*working women = all women. Unpaid labor is work. Women still have issues receiving equal information, equal education, equal opportunity, equal pay, equal status, equal rights.