Women get one day while men carry on hogging the other 364
International Women’s Day has lost its way. Stuffing women’s achievements into a solitary day is counter-productive, and distracts us from the socialist origins of the event.
I’m going to be brutally honest: I’m a little sick of International Women’s Day. When it approaches I groan a little inside. Suddenly invites to do talks and events crash into my inbox. While I don’t want to appear ungrateful (thank you nice people who want to employ me) WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 364 DAYS OF THE YEAR??!
Believe it or not, I am still a woman and historian on every day outside of 8th March. Yet the work offers only drip in then. This cramming together of opportunities inevitably means I have to turn things down, while screaming at my inbox “WHY CAN’T YOU ASK ME IN SEPTEMBER?”.
This is not a post about the mismanagement of my work schedule. It’s a reflection on a day that can feel counter-productive. Women should be sharing a platform and recognition with men, not given a separate space where we can be patted on the head for the lovely things we do.
We also need to be questioning what International Women’s Day is supposed to be about. I was slightly appalled to see the South Bank Centre’s Women of the World (WOW) programme featuring ex-Australian Prime Minster, Julia Guillard; a woman who wreaked misery on the lives of Australia’s poorest women through her merciless austerity measures. Yes, she was the country’s first female Prime Minister, but trickle down feminism is as big a myth as trickle down economics. If British women haven’t worked that out yet they need to be taken by the shoulders and shaken melodramatically while someone yells “MARGARET THATCHER AND THERESA MAY” at them.
To understand International Women’s Day we need to go back to it’s origins: in 1909 the Socialist Party of American declared a Women’s Day in honour of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union strike the previous year, which saw more than 20,000 mostly young migrant workers walk out of sweat shops in New York. In 1910 it was agreed to make it an annual event; a holiday for socialists!
In 1913 -1914 Russian women used International Women’s Day as a mechanism for protesting the war. Then in 1917 around 50,000 women workers went out on strike over the economic hardships it caused. As they marched the streets of Petrograd they chanted “bread and peace”.
Due to its distinctly anti-capitalist credentials, International Women’s Day was blotted out of US history. It was largely forgotten altogether until the UN brought it back to life in 1975, declaring it once again an annual event. However it is now a day which “recognises women’s achievements”.
I’m 100% in favour of recognising women’s achievements — it’s why I do what I do — but I can not fail to be disappointed by the eradication of the anti-capitalist history of the day. It’s how Julia Gillard can be given a platform at the South Bank Centre, rather than any of the 8,000 women workers (mostly cleaners) from Glasgow who went on strike last year over equal pay.
At its absolute worst, International Women’s Day has become a marketing ploy for companies. A juicy opportunity to push products at women; products made in factories in China and Bangladesh not a million miles away from the sweatshops the migrant women walked out of in 1908.
It’s good to see the Women’s Strike Assembly organising a women’s strike in the city. And there are lovely local initiatives like the Walthamstow Mums’ strike. But generally the day has lost all its connection to the economic struggle.
If we are going to have a day at all, let it be a day of collective action; a trigger point for a mass movement of women to demand better working conditions and rights. Then the other 364 days of the year we can celebrate the achievements of women, along side those of men.
