100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day

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.’

‘It’s clear that the demonstration for women in Tahrir has turned into a demonstration for sexual harassment,’ said Wael Abbas, an activist, as reports of women being sexually harassed at the protest emerged.

Women in Egypt — the first in the Arab world to gain the right to vote in 1956 and to secure the right to higher education — played a prominent role in the Egyptian protests that led to Mubarak’s resignation and a handful of women were killed during those protests.

It may not be a surprise to see this discrepancy between how welcome women’s voices were during the main revolution versus now — after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Why should we expect a new Egypt to be? But that doesn’t mean we all sit and wait patiently for ‘the right time.’ As Egyptian human rights activist and lawyer Dalia Zakhary said in that same article, “We will not have a revolution every time we want to amend the laws, so this is the time. Why is it never the time to put women as a priority?”

Indeed, why is it seemingly never even time simply for balance?

A friend of mine in recent weeks commented that in terms of things like progressive health reform, we’re standing in a river. If we’re not constantly moving forward, we’re being pushed back. There is no such thing as ‘static’. I’m finding this apropos of the state of women’s issues here in the US. There is currently a war being waged on women in this country, though according to some observers, young, ‘progressive’ women have been especially slow to sit up and take notice, let alone “take up arms against the assault,” as David S. Bernstein recently put it in his article for the Portland/Boston Phoenix titled, Will Women Fight Back. Bernstein writes:

In Washington, and in state houses where they have gained power, Republicans are hell-bent on erasing a generation of gains made by women.

This GOP effort, if successful, would:

* Redefine rape to make it more difficult for victims to get justice;
* Slash health-care funding;
* Further restrict access to family planning and birth control;
* Lower pay and benefits in predominantly female professions.

This is all part of a broader campaign. Republicans elected in November’s wave election have been in office less than two months, and already they have tipped their hand: rather than focusing on jobs and the economy, they are using this opportunity to push a wide-ranging ideological agenda, including union-busting, demolition of gun-control measures, freeing corporations to destroy the environment, and elimination of cultural funding such as the National Endowment for the Arts.

But most of all, the Republican ideology targets women.

New Republican majorities are pushing “policies that really, really harm women,” says Terri O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW). That includes “efforts to criminalize a range of health care” and “threats to women’s livelihood.”

GOPers are bringing back policy ideas thought to have been buried long ago, and thinking up entirely new ways to roll back progress.

“The whole thing is mean-spirited,” says Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine. “They’re trying to send women back to a distant era, when women had less ability to move forward and were less independent.”

“It’s almost like it’s coming from all sides,” says Kim Driscoll, mayor of Salem. “It’s a real concern. We ought to be standing up about it, and shouting from the rooftops.”

Yes — we do need to be shouting from the rooftops, as well as from the middle of Tahrir square and our Facebook home page and the ballot box. We need to be shouting with our wallets when able and whether that’s an option or not, with good, old-fashioned pen and paper addressed to our leaders (I have it on good authority that one of Maine’s female Republican senators ignores email petitions but does acknowledge ‘real letters’). The editors of our local papers need to hear from us, and so do our family members and neighbors — even the ones who are tired of hearing about it. Bernstein notes that Republican lawmakers are counting on their assault escaping attention among the general public; we can’t afford to let Rachel Maddow do all the heavy lifting on this one.

And listen — I’m just as guilty as the next person of intending to write that letter, show up at that rally, make that donation to Planned Parenthood, but then finding I forget; or I feel too busy at work, which will flail without me; or I look at my bank account and I’m a little broke this week. I can’t sit on any high horse, here. And yes, sometimes I feel like even if i do all those things, am I really doing anything that makes a difference? Should I be doing something else? After all, it’s not just women who suffer when women suffer. It’s all of us, every single human on this big blue marble of ours. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to get intimidated and feel lost when all we’re talking about is how to commemorate one day. We know deep down the implications are much, much deeper and much, much older. But we can start somewhere, even if most of us reading here fall into the ‘comfortable’ category more than the ‘revolutionary’ category our sisters in Cairo occupy.

Zachary Sniderman at mashable.com notes the vague feeling many people may feel about what one does on International Women’s Day: “It’s a time not just to celebrate the achievements of women worldwide but to raise questions about discrimination, equality and basic human rights. The day’s etiquette, like most holidays, is understandably vague: How do you publicly show your support? Is there a color to wear, petition to sign or event to attend?” His post lists a few social media campaigns on the theme, and invites others to share more. But along the lines of something Eric wrote recently in an astrology post, I think more and more of us are feeling the stirrings of wanting to do more.

I find myself wondering how much of ‘doing more’ really is a question of geography, time or the presence of a pre-existeing movement or project, and how much it’s more a question of waking up enough to see our true potential and capability and not letting it scare us back into the mantra, ‘But I’m already doing all I can… I have a job I need to do… I vote… here I am writing this blog post so other people can go out and do something! That counts, right?’

I almost gave up writing this piece because the shame of thinking I should be doing a heck of a lot more myself gets sticky and black very quickly. What place do I have urging others to pay attention and get involved? No wonder we’re still struggling; no wonder the war on women is gaining the foothold it is. We have to figure out how to face down our shame, our fear, our denial by the moment. To those women who are doing so daily and taking action in any way: thank you. There are enough of us to make this happen if we’re willing to help each other out along the way — and hold the space open for the men who ‘get it’ to stand with us. But right now there is no ‘static’, and the snows of winter are melting. This river is beginning to surge and rush; let’s keep moving until we reach the headwaters.