Woman Uninterrupted
This International Woman’s Day - 8 March - let’s do something a little different.
The usual thing is to reflect on how far we have come, and then assess what we still have left to achieve.
Lists will be made of the ways in which our lives might be better than our mothers’ and grandmothers’, and spotlights will be thrown on the best of us who have found previously unimaginable success.
Then to temper it, that second list of things we still need - to close the wage gap, provide access to affordable childcare, normalise a more equal distribution of domestic chores, create safe workplaces, homes and streets.
More recently there’s a third approach in which my inbox will be full of retailers inviting me to celebrate International Women’s Day by buying stuff - lingerie, makeup, home appliances - at discounted prices, in the cheeky hope that one day of bargains might make up for a lifetime of earning less.
But I’ll tell you what I would really like this IWD - a lot more days like the one I had last Wednesday. Because Wednesday was a beautiful thing - a whole day in which I was not interrupted.
I am on a cruise ship, sailing from New Zealand to Australia. At a rate of 20 knots, this will take us from Tuesday afternoon to Saturday morning. My job was to do back-to-back solo comedy shows - 8.30pm and 10.30pm - on Wednesday night.
It’s my first cruise since 2019 and the audience are 95 per cent Australian, so I woke up nervous. But here’s the magical thing - getting ready for it was the only thing I had to do all day.
Can you imagine it?! When was the last time you got to spend a whole day focused on One Thing? Women are constantly interrupted - by children, partners, elderly parents. We are always halfway through a task - or a thought - when someone needs us to feed them, find a sock, pick up, drop off, explain why the sky is blue…
I am travelling alone, so have my own space. I spoke to no one. I stopped only when I was hungry to eat food someone else made. I was able to deal with my anxiety by (this is wild) actually focusing on the thing making me anxious - preparing the show - rather than needing to push it aside while I saw to other things for other people.
I shared the joy of this with an online group of writers who are also mothers, saying: “I have been able to spend the whole day preparing and writing and polishing with NO INTERRUPTIONS from anyone and the luxury of this (and the novelty) is blowing my mind! Women are always INTERRUPTED. Today I have just done my job!!! It is amazing and probably like being a man with a study... And when the door is shut, everyone knows not to open it. Or even knock.”
They got it. They shared their own stories. One mother says even the interruptions get interrupted by various members of her household.
And of course, Virginia Woolf got it back in 1929 when she wrote that the barrier for women is not lack of talent, but lack of opportunity. That a woman must have “money and a room of her own” if she is to write fiction. Or do anything, really.
And I bet you get it, too. So this March 8 my wish for you is, for a whole day, to be a Woman Uninterrupted.