Women’s Day?
Call me irrational but I could not help but feel irate at the recent Women’s Day. How so? Because it only emphasized how every single other day of the year is, in Afghanistan (and not just there really), Men’s Day. I mean how is distributing roses going to help empower anyone? In a way, over here it feels like an ill-suited Mother’s Day, which after all was set up by Petain’s government, not exactly renown for its liberalism.
So really, what is Women’s Day about for the men I work with and those of a few other NGOs? It’s about sending a congratulations email to the 10 or so female staff out of 600. Am I the only one to see the irony there? And it is about offering roses and rings and the like. Right, because that’s truly going to empower us. I mean gender-clichéed gifts are certainly going to help women know how to achieve equality in society. I believe most men also settled for no wife beating on Women’s Day, but I trust that a few that failed to show sufficient gratefulness will have to make up for it the following day.
Worst still, I’m remembering a TV serie where a women rants that men are truly rubbish and that the only more rubbish thing than men are women. I’d sometimes tend to concur when I hear that some women in some office, for whom special events had been organized the whole day, went ‘Are we getting a present?’ No, you bitch! Your present is your job and the fact that your husband is allowing you to work and all the efforts your organization is making daily to make your environment gender sensitive. Your present is the opportunity you are getting daily to advance the cause of all women around the country. Your present is the acknowledgement that around you, some people are aware of your human rights and simultaneously that most of Afghanistan fails to meet basic standards in terms of right to health and education for women, but that at least we know this. Not that knowledge solves the problem, but it’s a first step in the right direction.
So for Women’s Day, here is my suggestion, let’s tell all our male colleagues to shove their congrats mails, rings and roses up their a…. Let’s send them to MoWA, where they will make sure to publish all our vacancies, and let’s set a target to ourselves: within 6 months, we will try to increase in all bases female representation by 15 %. That’s small, yet significant. A Happy Women’s Day to all with me on that.
So really, what is Women’s Day about for the men I work with and those of a few other NGOs? It’s about sending a congratulations email to the 10 or so female staff out of 600. Am I the only one to see the irony there? And it is about offering roses and rings and the like. Right, because that’s truly going to empower us. I mean gender-clichéed gifts are certainly going to help women know how to achieve equality in society. I believe most men also settled for no wife beating on Women’s Day, but I trust that a few that failed to show sufficient gratefulness will have to make up for it the following day.
Worst still, I’m remembering a TV serie where a women rants that men are truly rubbish and that the only more rubbish thing than men are women. I’d sometimes tend to concur when I hear that some women in some office, for whom special events had been organized the whole day, went ‘Are we getting a present?’ No, you bitch! Your present is your job and the fact that your husband is allowing you to work and all the efforts your organization is making daily to make your environment gender sensitive. Your present is the opportunity you are getting daily to advance the cause of all women around the country. Your present is the acknowledgement that around you, some people are aware of your human rights and simultaneously that most of Afghanistan fails to meet basic standards in terms of right to health and education for women, but that at least we know this. Not that knowledge solves the problem, but it’s a first step in the right direction.
So for Women’s Day, here is my suggestion, let’s tell all our male colleagues to shove their congrats mails, rings and roses up their a…. Let’s send them to MoWA, where they will make sure to publish all our vacancies, and let’s set a target to ourselves: within 6 months, we will try to increase in all bases female representation by 15 %. That’s small, yet significant. A Happy Women’s Day to all with me on that.
posted by Babs @ 1:50 AM
4 Comments:
Beautiful... couldn't have put it better myself.
Re the previous post - man, I need to come try these food halls...
You said it so well. Where I work, women make up over 20% of programme staff- they set the target and it's getting there. So you know it's possible.
However, women's day was a terrible joke. The women had to organize it and the men refused to even give speeches. Argh.
hey babs,
good to see you are still blogging. i have to say that it is not only in Afghanistan where women's day is primarily associated with flowers. here in italy you must give mimosa to your womenfolk. but don't listen to me. i am just in bad odour because i did not do anything for it. what is the idea womens day in fact? round tables about domestic violence and marches through the streets? at any rate i think we are agreed that it shouldn't just be a second rate follow up to valentine's day.
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