Posts Tagged ‘International Women’s Day’
Want Equal Rights? The Truth Is – Just Take Them!
“If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.” —Sojourner Truth, former slave, abolitionist, Methodist minister, and early U.S. women’s rights leader
International Women’s Day began 99 years ago. With so much progress accomplished since 1911, yet so much more remaining to be done, it seems to me that it’s time for women to change our approach to something closer Sojourner Truth’s.
Her advice to women as she stated it in the above quote to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, when they met in 1853, comes from a position of knowing her own power. Despite being been born into slavery and experiencing oppression, poverty, and discrimination far greater than most women reading this blog in 2010, Truth was way ahead of many of us in her perspective about how to advance equal rights.
Without question, in many places around the globe, women remain as oppressed as Sojourner Truth–born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York, and once sold for $100 and a herd of sheep–was before she “walked off” from her master.
Read MoreDo Women’s Gains Make Women’s History Month Ho Hum?
I’m finding Women’s History Month this year greeted with yawns. That could mean women and women’s contributions are becoming everywhere recognized as integral to political and social history. If so, it’s not yet a publicly acknowledged fact.
No surprise there.
History has been defined through male lenses and written by male hands. Almost nobody, male or female, ever thought of Women’s History Anything before the 1970’s. Officially, it’s been in existence since 1978 and started on the left coast (as Women’s History Week) in Sonoma County CA. Now it sounds just nice and ordinary. You can even buy Women’s History Month greeting cards.
So it’s hard for many to fathom that the inception of Women’s History Month marked a revolutionary shift in thinking about whose actions are worth recording. An interesting overview is here, and Louise Bernikow’s “Our Story” articles tell me interesting snippets I don’t find elsewhere; your children probably won’t find them in their textbooks either because few history courses even today have caught up with the stunning progress women have made into leadership and influential roles during the past decade.
Read MoreInternational Women’s Day at 100–We’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe
I tore open the New York Times this morning, hoping to see an article about International Women’s Day, today, March 8.
Nada. Zilch. Nothing recognizing a day first observed in 1909 and ingrained in the global women’s movement.
The economy dominates the news and for good reason, but why not at least an op ed that tells readers the effect of the global financial meltdown women and the spiraling effect that has on families. But then when it comes to cash circulation worldwide, women do 2/3 of the work but get 10% of the income, according to the International Women’s Day 2009 website. If gold rules, then no wonder that only 21% of news stories globally are about women. Yet women continue to be the primary victims of sex trafficking and other sexual abuse, dislocation from wars they didn’t start, and repressive practices such as genital cutting and even restrictions on physical movement.
Read MoreInternational Women’s Day and Women’s History Month: What Do You Want to Be?
“What do you want to be?” we ask our daughters and sons when they are growing up.
Barack Obama poses this question to elementary school children in this delightful video called “I Want to Be” that looks at political leadership of women through American history. Take a look and ask yourself the same question: what do you want to be next?
This video is just in time for International Women’s Day– March 8–and Women’s History Month, celebrated throughout March. “Celebrated” is the right word for where women are today, too: on the cusp of a great leaping point toward true equality and even in some instances, parity.
Watch and see where U.S. women are in national political leadership as compared to other countries. You’ll find interesting vignettes of women shattering barriers, others who didn’t succeed but paved the way for the next woman who tried, and some facts that might surprise you.
Read MoreBang Those Pots and Keep This Movement Moving
Today is March 8, International Women’s Day 2006. But before getting into that, let’s think back to September 1995.
Spin the globe and stop the world on China.
It’s the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, where hugely ambitious and thrilling goals were set for improving the lives of women, and by extension their families and the world.
The official conference was in Beijing, but the much larger convocation of activists from nongovernmental organizations was literally stuck in the mud in Huairu, a suburb an hour’s drive from the city.
Thousands of us had arrived early on the morning of Sept. 6, to stand packed together under a roof of brightly colored umbrellas, jockeying for the few hundred seats inside the auditorium where then first lady of the United States Hillary Clinton was slated to give a speech.
Read MoreFebruary 2006 Newsletter
“Well behaved women rarely make history”
~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Honor Our Mothers by Celebrating Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day on March 8.
Here’s a little background on Women’s History Month: In my youth and up until the 1970’s, women’s history was virtually nonexistent the public school curriculum or in public consciousness. The Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women first initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978. They chose the week of March 8 to make International Women’s Day the focal point of the observance.
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