100 years of International Women's Day

Saturday, March 5, 2011

This coming Tuesday, March 8, is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (click here to go to the official site). Look there or in your local newspaper for IWD events in your area.

In my area, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, I will gather with local women, men, and children at the Manitoulin Nordic Ski Club at 2 p.m. The guest speaker is Ruth Farquhar, writer and activist, whose topic is "Women in Media and Entertainment."

Below I quote from the IWD website where it explains what International Women's Day is about...and the range of ideas and activities it engenders.
 
International Women's Day 2011 Theme


Each year around the world, International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Organisations, governments and women's groups around the world choose different themes each year that reflect global and local gender issues.

So while many people may think there is one global theme each year, this is not always correct. It is completely up to each country and group as to what appropriate theme they select.

Below are some of the global United Nation themes used for International Women's Day to date:

- 2011: Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women
- 2010: Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all
- 2009: Women and men united to end violence against women and girls
- 2008: Investing in Women and Girls
- 2007: Ending Impunity for Violence against Women and Girls
- 2006: Women in decision-making
- 2005: Gender Equality Beyond 2005: Building a More Secure Future
- 2004: Women and HIV/AIDS
- 2003: Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals
- 2002: Afghan Women Today: Realities and Opportunities
- 2001: Women and Peace: Women Managing Conflicts
- 2000: Women Uniting for Peace
- 1999: World Free of Violence against Women
- 1998: Women and Human Rights
- 1997: Women at the Peace Table
- 1996: Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future
- 1975: First IWD celebrated by the United Nations

I encourage you to give some thought to the issues represented in the themes listed above. How do you support or hinder them in your day-to-day life? What can you do to improve the situation for women in your sphere of influence? What will you do?
Consider checking out these IWD-related websites:

The United Nations:
http://www.un.org/events/women/2001/

Canada's list of events:
http://internationalwomensday.com/search.asp?country=37

American list of events:
http://internationalwomensday.com/search.asp?country=223

United Kingdom's list of events:
http://internationalwomensday.com/search.asp?country=221

International Women's Day

March 8, 2010

Today is International Women's Day.

If you are a woman, I encourage you to examine your life as a woman in your place, your time. What can you do, today, to inprove your own sense of equality in your daily life? Do that thing. Start small or start big; that's up to you, but please start. Use your voice to speak up for yourself. Use your feet to carry you into a new challenge. Use your hands to make one change today, to set the stage for other changes in your future. Ask yourself the same questions I ask of men in the next paragraph.

If you are a man, I encourage you to examine the lives of the women you know and have known, as well as your own life. How have you related to women thus far? What jokes do you tell that feed old assumptions and attitudes? Do you see yourself and the women around you as being on the same level? Ask a woman how she feels when she walks down a dark street at night and compare that to how you feel doing the same thing. Notice how many jobs you see as "women's work," even if you would never use that term. Ask yourself the same questions I ask of women in the paragraph above.

You know the issues:

• sexual abuse and assault
• work safety
• equal pay
• education
• safe health options and practices
• domestic assault
• minimizing women through "humour"
• sexism in books, magazines and textbooks
• elder abuse
• access to training and jobs
• lack of safety in our communities
• cultural practices that harm and limit women and girls
• lack of female-specific health research and treatment
• assumptions of weakness, timidity and inadequacy

The list is longer than that, but this is a start. No matter where you live, I guarantee that at least some of these problems are common to the women and girls around you...and just because they are female, not because of general poverty or other situations.

There's so much information out there about women and oppression and rights and equality that I will not write any more about them here. Instead I refer you to some useful resources, adding to the list I gave in my March 3 post, "4 Sites for Women (and Men)," which you can find if you click here.

A very few online resources:

• WomenWatch, the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality
• Check out this ezine, Modern Feminism's information about International Women's Day and other topics related to women. (If you're having a negative reaction to the word "feminism," I encourage you to consider your assumptions and see what is being offered.)
• Watch this short UTube video of the Secretary General of the United Nations giving his message about the UN's work to help women.
• Wikipedia's article on International Women's Day, giving a history and brief discussion of the ways it is celebrated around the world

Think about it. Inequality is all around you. What will you do to change that?

O Canada!

Friday, March 5,  2010
I heard on the CBC Radio (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) today that the government is considering changing the lyrics of our national anthem because a number of women are protesting the use of the words "our sons." Given that I've been writing something daily for International Women's Day, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring on this topic.

I happen to love the "singability" and most of the sentiments contained within the official English version, but I have to say I like some of the changes proposed by Kim Campbell and others. Though I like singing our anthem, I know of others who don't -- some Native friends and some women. Ever the fence-sitter, I can also see the arguments of those who say it's all a bunch of whoo-hah -- and expensive, time-consuming whoo-hah at that.

In any case, here's my proposed version, briefly considered. The current version is on the left, and mine is on the right, with my changes Bolded.

O Canada!                                                                  O Canada!
Our home and native land!                                           Our home on Native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.                   True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,                           With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!                                   Our True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,                                      From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.                                         We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!                            Let's keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.                          O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.                          O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Canada is a great country, though, whatever we sing and however we sing. I'm delighted and grateful to live here.

Word Wonder - woman

Thursday, March 4, 2010

During the 1970s I was in my twenties, and women's liberation  was gaining a foothold. Many young women were not content to follow their mothers into what were seen as narrowly defined and restrictive roles of housewife and mother. More women were seeing that as workers they were often -- I think I can safely say, usually -- paid less than men were for doing the same job. In addition, women weren't "supposed" to aspire to be carpenters or doctors or backhoe operators; they "should" be happy to be the secretary, the nurse or the teacher, if they were going to work outside the home at all. Women rebelled against sexual mores that restricted, judged and punished actions that were acceptable for men but not for women.

This movement included the examination of language -- the words that were used to describe women. It became unacceptable to refer to an adult female as a "girl." Other previously ordinary terms came under the microscope of social change. Why "man and wife" instead of "husband and wife?" Why use male pronouns to describe all of humanity? Why use the term "chairman" when that position was held by a woman? And so on. Usages that have become more or less the new normal in the 21st century were changed during the turbulent decades since the mid-1960s.

I was one of those young women who questioned old expectations. I examined my thinking and my language and my goals. I talked with friends, family and coworkers, encouraging them to do the same. "Just think about it," I'd say. "There's a lot of inequality going on here." In the early 70s I did a research project called "Sexism in Children's Literature" and was surprised at the overwhelming lack of female characters as protagonists and heroes in those books. Like many in my generation, I became a parent who sought gender equality in my kids' upbringing, through books, toys, pastimes and conversation.

As a lover of words and equity, I decided today to look for the origin of the word "woman." I was surprised by much of what I found. It turns out that, contrary to what I always believed about the word, it was not originally a derivative of or an attachment to the word "man." It is certainly not a combination of "womb" and "man," as I've sometimes heard. Etymologically speaking, the words "woman" and "man" are connected only in their earliest histories.

 

In fact, the story of "woman" begins with the ancient Indo-European root mem-, meaning "to think." Mem- lead to the Latin mens, "the mind" and to the Old English mann. These words referred to male and female humans of all ages.

Speakers of Old English wanted to be able to distinguish between a female human and a male human, so they came up with wif-man for female-human and wer for male-human. By the way, it was only later that wif (meaning "female") became our word "wife."

During the Middle Ages, the pronunciation of wifman slowly changed into  wimman, possibly because it was easier to pronounce without that f in the middle. Various dialects changed the spelling to wummon, wumman, wommon and womman. These changes probably account for the spellings we now see: woman and women. Through those same years, the male wer was supplanted by mann to refer to a male person. The only common vestige of wer in English today is found in "werewolf."

Just as mann started as a gender neutral term for "human" and only later added the specific sense of a male person, the word "girl" followed a similar path. It also started out as a gender neutral word, though for a young person of either sex. It wasn't until the late 1300s that it came to mean a female child.

This little investigation has led me to drop my assumption that the word "woman" is another example of the many ways women have been seen as secondary, afterthoughts and "also rans." Though oppression of women cannot sanely be denied, I know that some things have changed in the last few generations. Some things most certainly have not.

The point for me is to remind myself that I can only help myself (and others) move forward if I open my heart and mind to new information, to changing realities and ancient truths. Being willing to examine my assumptions helps. Drawing on youthful enthusiasms as well as aging perspectives helps, too.

I'm proud and grateful to be a woman. This was not always the case, but it is today.

7 Actions for Women

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

On March 8, International Women's Day, many women and some men & children will gather in various places to listen to speakers, maybe march or eat a nice meal. They will don IWD buttons or t-shirts. And then, the chances are pretty good that what was heard and learned will blend into the demands of everyday life or just be forgotten.

Days such as March 8 are definitely important, so please do support you local event(s). To prepare for that day, here are some suggestions for things you can do  beforehand:

•  Take 15 minutes a day until the 8th to explore a website on women's issues. I posted four yesterday (click here), but there are probably thousands.
• For five minutes really give some thought to one woman you know and imagine what she might have dealt with in her life simply because she is female.
• Now imagine a woman living on another continent than yours. What do you know or what can you imagine about her struggles and triumphs simply because she is female?
• List five women living near you, even if you don't know their names. Make a point of doing something kind for each one -- a smile, a small gift, a visit.
• Look in the Yellow Pages. Count the number of women lawyers and the number of men lawyers (or any typically male occupation).
• Go to the library or look at your own children's books. Count how many books have a main character who is female and how many have one who is male.
• Pick up any general interest magazine. Count how many people in the ads and story photos are male and how many are female.

Do yourself and your world a favour. Educate yourself about the realities of life for millions of women in the world today. Be conscious of your own realities. How do you discount women in your thinking and words. How do you discount men in your thinking and your words?

We're all on this planet together. I urge you to find ways to even things up for everybody.

4 Sites for Women (& Men)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

I've been all over the map today, trying to focus in on what I'd write about in this post. Nothing seemed to be gelling, but I often find when I'm stuck in some way that doing anything is often better than doing nothing. And now I've ended up liking this post just fine. I hope you do, too.

Here are four websites and blogs by women I know or have happened upon in my webly travels:

Juicy Tomatoes - Ripe living after 51, with Susan Swartz. On February 25, Susan wrote a blog post called "Women's History...Once More with Feeling." Her opening paragraphs read:

Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, that was then, this is now. Can’t we just move on? After all, we’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time.

Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Learning and Violence - "The site is one step towards a long held dream of a virtual international institute for research and innovative practice to understand and address the impact of violence on learning. The vision was germinated by Jenny Horsman with the help of Elizabeth Morrish and Judy Hofer and incubated in discussions with educators and researchers from many different countries."

Native Women's Association of Canada - a message from President Jeannette Corbiere Lavell:

"...I am proud of our association’s distinguished, three decade long history of dedication to restoring the positive social, economic, cultural and political well-being of Aboriginal women in Canada.


Over the years many strong women have dedicated their valuable time to achieve our association’s vision of advocating, educating, and promoting gender equality for our current and future generations. Our work is more important than ever, and as we continue to participate in high profile government and community initiatives we aim to keep you up to date by providing this information on our website. I encourage women of all ages to stay informed by visiting our website on a regular basis."

Center for Women's Global Leadership - "The Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) develops and facilitates women's leadership for women's human rights and social justice worldwide."

Noteworthy March Days

March 1, 2010

Here it is already -- the beginning of a new month and time for me to pull out March's observations. They arise from Canada, the U. S. and other countries. Some have sponsors and are advertised and observed in an official way. Others apparently don't have a sponsor; I guess some individual or group just thought they'd be a good idea.

As I said in my January and February posts, people love to mark special events, days and people, so I've opted to give them a bit of "air-time" on my blog. I only mention observations related in some way to this blog, including the ones I think are quirky or that make me laugh. Balance, people, balance.

So, here are March's days of note:

• International Listening Awareness Month - We're not talking hearing but, rather, listening...with your ears, mind, heart and spirit. At least that's my very brief take on truly listening.
• International Women’s Day, March 8. More on this in days to come, but please check out the Canadian Status of Women website. "Strong Women, Strong Canada, Strong World."
• Well Elderly Day - I actually don't know the date of this one, but surely each of us can contribute to one elderly person's day in some good way. Any day would be great.
• Companies That Care Day - I find it ironic that no sponsor has been found for this one.
• Forgive Mom and Dad Day - One of my sons went to a great high school in Ottawa. Every morning, the principal -- who greeted every single kid by name in that very large school -- would finish each day's intercom announcements with the friendly admonition, "And remember...be nice to your parents." He was so well liked that one of the art students painted his likeness and his words on the wall in one of the main corridors. As a parent, I had to love the guy. As a daughter, I was nudged by his gentle reminders to do some forgiving of my own imperfect parents.
• National Problem Gambling Awareness Week - This American site contains pages and pages of valuable information about problem gambling.
• National Women's History Month
• National Ethics Awareness Month
• National Optimism Month
• Return The Borrowed Books Week, March 1-7 -- Go ahead. Do it. Root around under the bed and on the floor of the hall closet and find those long-overdue library books you've been too busy to return. Your librarian will love you. So will I.

And what, oh, what would this column of celebrations and observations be without one delightful oddity? March's prize for Wacky Observation of the Month goes to...drum roll, please...National Umbrella Month. I live in snow country, so the idea of honouring umbrellas in March seems a bit crazy, or premature, anyway. So, I figure this one may have originated in London, Vancouver or Seattle. Maybe they have rainy Marches and feel honour bound to celebrate their umbrellas.

In any case, have a great March -- whatever you celebrate.