International Women’s Day - Celebrating the Stroppiness of Women
International Women’s Day is one of my favourite lady-celebrations. Low-key as it – and increasingly observed via offers of retail discounts for things women are supposed to adore, like small appliances and lingerie – it has a proud history.
The first IWD was organised in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America (three cheers for the pinko lefties!) and then it caught on around the world, especially in countries where women didn’t have the right to vote, which was most of them apart from New Zealand, us being a famously early adopter.
It’s wild when you think about it but our sisters in America had to wait until 1920 to be allowed to participate in democracy, and in the UK they had to hang on for another eight years after that. Don’t even start me on France (1944) and Switzerland which remained neutral (as in “not bothered”) about women’s suffrage until 1971.
The special appeal of International Women’s Day for me is that it celebrates the stroppiness of women. This isn’t your hearts-and-flowers Mother’s Day celebration, intended to honour the unsung, unpaid work and emotional labour women do quietly at home. Traditionally this has meant that mum had breakfast brought to her one Sunday a year, intended as a notable inversion of the way things were usually done every other day.
Instead, IWD celebrates our bolshiness – the noisy protests, the taking-it-to-the-streets moments in women’s history. It invites us to reflect on the role women have played in major political and social change.
Because the ladies have been unladylike for hundreds of years. Strikes and riots led by women go back at least as far as food riots in England and Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries, and on through leading roles in revolutions in America, Russia and France.
In the 20th century, women were in the front lines of civil rights battles, homosexual and trans rights activism, reproductive rights and women’s safety. We’ve protested, chanted, gone on hunger strikes, chained ourselves to railings, offered passive resistance and direct action. We have traditionally been doing a lot of stuff that doesn’t end up commemorated by home-sweet-home needlepoint cushions.
In the immortal words of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (no relation to Maggie), “Well behaved women seldom make history”.
Maybe the fighting spirit has been hardwired into us since the dawn of time. Anthropological theories that suggest the origin of the concept of “community” was likely to have risen out of women-led uprisings against physically dominant males in an effort to organise effective shared childcare and collective security. We can’t know for sure, but you can picture that happening in the village, right?
The United Nations started observing International Women’s Day in 1975, and invited member states worldwide to make it an annual day for women’s rights. In many countries it’s a day off – and in some of them, just a day off for women.
It would be fascinating to see that, wouldn’t it? A whole day when women didn’t turn up to work. Obviously, in some less diverse spaces – a boardroom perhaps – no one would notice. But in other spaces – teaching, healthcare, HR, clerical, accountancy, manufacturing, retail, hospo and care work – the empty spaces left by women would be significant.
In either scenario – whether women were suddenly absent or never there - it would be a useful snapshot of where women work, and where they have not yet claimed space in equal numbers to men.
Meantime, take a moment this week to feel proud of the loud, noisy, unladylike bits of women’s history.