For the past 150 years, women have been particularly aware of the lack of balance between the genders including the right to own property, vote, get fair pay, and to making decisions for our bodies. Besides all the baggage of shame, not being enough, comparisons, and all that goes along with being undervalued as an entire gender. And yet, here we are in 2023 still requiring a day on the calendar to remind us we are unique and worthy of that balance.
We also have to acknowledge that gender lines are getting blurred and binary identities aren't what they were, even a few years ago. What does this day mean for those who don't identify in the spectrum of "Women". Are we acknowledging and/or creating division?
Are we contributing to the very system we have fought for so long?
Is this one day a year doing us much justice to create a society of balance? Or, is it simply further perpetuating and supporting the very system that has yet to be one that is egalitarian? (At least for for the past 5,000 years).
I, for one, love a day to honor the women who have accomplished great things in the face of patriarchy. I honor and respect the suffragists and women's liberation movement(s) that have paved the path to break through barriers. But it's those barriers that should be gone by now, right?? Isn't that what both Julia Ward Howe and Gloria Steinem expected by 2020?
What does that day look like when we don't need an annual reminder that women are to be honored and empowered? We've come a long way baby and don't need our own cigarette anymore!
Was this day manufactured to appease us, or to get us over the threshold to a dawning of an era where we have moved beyond domination and into one of partnership?
Are we ready to own our incredible gifts as women, and honor men for their gifts and step over the threshold together.
Let us hold that day as the vision and purpose of the UN's International Women's Day. My prayer is to see this celebratory day evolve into International Egalitarian Day.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/holidays/mothers-day/the-original-mother-s-day-proclamation