International Women's Day

Today is International Women’s Day—a day to celebrate the political, social and economic achievements of women around the world, a day to promote political and human rights in countries where violence and inequity still make life a struggle for women, and, in an increasing number of countries, a day to express love and sympathy to the women in your life. The theme for 2007 is “Ending Impunity for Violence against Women and Girls”.

The concept of an IWD was established in 1910 at an international women’s conference, and the day was first officially celebrated by over a million people the following year on March 8th in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. I am glad to know there’s an increasing interest in International Women’s Day and that the UN followed up on their Declaration of Human Rights* with a 1977 resolution allows member states to observe a Day for Women's Rights and International Peace on any day of the year, in accordance with their historical and national traditions. Although there is an International Men’s Day (IMD), it’s celebrated on different days in different countries and is commonly seen to be a false parallel to IWD.

I think I am very sensitive to ‘fairness’ issues and committed to eliminating discrimination in all forms wherever I see it. Of course, being a WASP, I don’t always see it and therefore need to be reminded that the problem with discrimination (whether it is against women, people of color, gays, the poor, the homeless or older persons) is that it is often unconscious and unthinking—sustained by ignorance, denial and ‘cognitive blindness’.

Bringing about social change at the global level is difficult and can take a long time. But when the time is right, centuries of injustice can transform in only a few years, as we all witnessed in the civil rights movement. This is not to say that when a paradigm shifts that everything is done. On the contrary. A paradigm shift changes nothing in the circumstances, but it changes our relationship to everything. That’s when the real work begins.

I believe that women are the key to solving many of the most important problems of our times. For example, in India and other countries where empowering women has become a priority, women have had a profound impact on the country’s capacity to confront and deal with issues of hunger and starvation. Empowering women, or anyone else for that matter, actually begins when people stop relating to their situations as victims and take responsibility for their circumstances and their future. By responsibility I don’t mean they blame themselves for being discriminated against, but they accept and ‘own’ it as a fact of life and use it as a beginning from which to create alternative ways of understanding and new practices for relating to one another. For example, I recently heard of a woman in Ethiopia who stood up against her village’s practice of female genital mutilation and who ended up enrolling not only her village, but the surrounding villages and eventually her entire country in stopping this practice altogether.

The ongoing injustices against women in many countries remind us that we’re never going to have a world that works as long as half of us are trapped in cultures and paradigms in which we are still victims of historical practices and beliefs that limit opportunity, perpetuate inequity and suppress our humanity. As it relates to our purpose here, I believe women are the key to creating a world free of ageism, a world in which who people are is more important than how old they are.

I hope that each of us, whether we are a man or a woman, take this day to reflect on who we are and the commitments we have or that we might make which could bring about the kinds of changes this day is intended to highlight.

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* Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Written by Jim Selman at News
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