My Observations on International Women's Day

First off, to all of the women on the planet, I'd like to wish you a happy International Women's Day! I truly believe that a lot of progress has been made on the fight for women's equality. That being said, this post is actually about the work that we have yet to do.

I was just out at a cafeteria having some lunch and I heard the man in front of me say "congratulations" to the cafeteria employees, both women. Without any context, they were both fairly confused, but then he revealed to them that he was congratulating them on the act of being female. He then went on to explain that he called his girlfriend early in the morning (waking her up) today and had said the same thing to her, and understandably his girlfriend had also been confused. He explained that he also congratulated her on being beautiful and then she said thank you and told him that she was going to go back to sleep.

Women all around the world are faced with all sorts of malicious inequality, discrimination and abuse. My anecdote surely isn't an example of any of those. What my anecdote does denote, however, is that there continues to be a culture of repudiation, spurning and dubiety of the need for women to continue to fight for equality.

The man in my story, I'm quite confident, was actually trying to be nice, however it is my opinion that he kind of missed the mark for a few reasons. First, he called his girlfriend so early that he woke her up. Surely he knows her schedule well enough to realize that she wouldn't be awake, and that is at minimum a little rude. Second, he congratulated her for being a woman, but this missed the whole point of the day which is to recognize that there was and continues to be a real need to fight for women's rights and equality. Sending congratulations to any person who is a member of a group that has been victimized on a day set aside to recognize their struggle seems, at best, disingenuous and mean spirited and, at worst, might be seen as a criticism of that groups struggle for fair treatment. Third, the man then capped it all off by "complimenting" her for being attractive. Again, saying to a woman "congratulations for being a woman, oh, and a hot one at that" doesn't really seem to fit when women have been unjustly treated, and part of that unfair treatment has been due to the objectification of their bodies.

The man in my story wasn't being violent towards women, and I think he meant what he was saying to be taken in a nice way, but it is exactly because he was not aware of the potentially pernicious effects of his words that I believe that what he said is problematic. It is indicative of the underlying culture that we live in and it is a culture that is ripe with assumptions and customs that lead people to unwittingly perpetuate the stereotypes and inherent flow of the cultural river that continues to keep women downstream from their potential and their goals.

Again, happy International Women's Day, and let's keep moving in a positive direction!