In case you didn’t catch the doodle on Google’s website, today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Begun in Europe in 1911 and adopted by the UN in 1975, this year the day falls amidst interesting times, for sure. We live in a world where revolution is sweeping through many nations which overtly repress women (in the Middle East/North Africa, for example) and supposedly ‘advanced’ countries mount ever-more-insidious measures to undermine women’s health (the US, for example). Yet many are left wondering what exactly to do today.
In some places, it seems the answer is obvious. Female union workers in Wisconsin get that their fight for collective bargaining is as much about keeping women — and thus entire families — healthy and fed and able to survive as it is about some general notion of ‘workers rights’. Clearly if you’re a woman and live anywhere near Madison, WI, keeping pressure on Gov. Walker is high on the list.
Meanwhile women in Cairo, Egypt had plans to stage a ‘million woman march’ today in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the recent historic protests that led to the ouster of former Pres. Mubarak. Those protests were notable in part because of the significant number of women out in force with the men, chanting, creating public art and adding their hands to those rocking the cradle of civilization into a new era.
Unfortunately, those protests turned violent and belie the fact that just as the revolution has not fully dissolved Egypt’s status quo in terms of military rule, neither did the presence of women in Tahrir during those weeks indicate sudden equality.
According to a post on mostersandcritics.com:
The peaceful women-led demonstration to demand a greater role in politics and equality turned violent with the army firing warning shots into the air to disperse men who clashed with one another as a few hundred women were caught in the middle.
In a twist to the slogan ‘Down with the regime’ — widely chanted throughout the anti-government protests that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak as president — several men chanted ‘Down with women.’