Does women’s day serve a purpose?

Let us always keep an open mind to all ideas

Yesterday, in the cold morning with a blanket wrapped around me, as I started my day, I switched on my phone’s Wi-Fi. The notifications flooded, there were more than usual. This was normal for birthdays and anniversaries on group chats. I wondered who is being wished today. Turns out it was me, a woman. I knew the 8th of March is international women’s day. I had just forgotten because honestly, I do not really care. So let us talk about yesterday.

Now I understand that a lot of women around the world do not have the rights that they deserve. We have not attained complete equality just yet, and we certainly need to get there. As a woman, it is in my interest to ensure that we get there. I just do not believe that having a day where we all get together and say “Oh! So much inequality”, helps. You see the problem is, we might have generated momentum for just one day, but it ended on that very day. So what did we accomplish? Other than as my friend puts it, “it gives men in advertising more money in their pockets”. Let us take a deeper dive into this.

Does women’s day serve a practical purpose? Yesterday, I brought up this question with my friends. While some agreed with me and said it had just become a formality, to pretend to care, others disagreed. One friend brought up the point that conversations that would usually not have been had, are being brought forward. She told me about an article she read about the struggles women go through. Apparently, she was not aware of the struggles. Now considering that the article was about women’s struggles, a woman should have been aware of it cored? So why did she have to read the article for her eyes to be opened?

The point is all women are going through struggles specific to their situation. They all have problems that come from being a woman, but they are different. Not everyone can relate to each other’s problems. For example, I have always lived in an environment where education was considered a priority regardless of your gender. While I am aware that there are women out there in the world who are denied access to education solely based on their gender, I do not relate to it. How am I different from a man who also supports the fact that everyone has a right to education? Both of us know the problem but have never experienced it and do not know what it feels like.

When I was younger, the apartment complex where I lived used to have an event for women’s day. The goal was for all women who owned a business, could set up a little stall to display their work and promote it. It was like a little market; a fun one I must add. But, what impact did it have? While it did help some women, the numbers were limited. Some of them made products just to sell on that day. That is not a business, that is a hobby. A hobby is good, but again, there is no long-term impact. It’s fun, but we did not work towards our goal of getting equal rights. Ironically, some women would be promoting businesses run by their husbands or other men in the family, which on a normal basis they did not have any involvement in. So who was empowered and what was changed? Instead of being on or around women’s day, this market could have been at any time around the year.

Let us leave behind my surroundings and get a little generic. Due to some women’s day posts, I have become aware of certain statistics. Now what?  Us Nothing. The statistics stay in my mind, like so many other things, and I continue with life. There was no action taken on it. According to an Instagram post, there are still 72 countries where women cannot open their own bank account. This is a staggering statistic. Now you might doubt the validity of this statistic given its source but let us assume it is correct for a moment. Why did we have to wait till women’s day for this statistic to come to light? It should be spoken about constantly. What women’s day represents should be a constant conversation and not kept for one day where we go “Oh! That’s shocking!” and then go ahead with our lives without any action. Everyone that stands up for equal rights for women is doing it regardless of the day it is. Those who do not care, continue to not care. Worse yet, they pretend to care and gain some brownie points. So what have we accomplished?

More often than not, organizations feel the pressure to do something for women’s day and end up doing something which creates no change at all. It is like giving a birthday gift. Every single year you have to come up with something which the other person will like, which is thoughtful and within your budget. Instead, if we just gave each other gifts without any occasion whenever we felt like it, the gifts would be better and more meaningful. The same needs to happen with organizations. Through conversations and discussions throughout the year, they need to be pushed (aggressively in some cases) towards making policy decisions that create long-term impact, instead of having a prominent figure put out a video about how the organization values women.

All this is to say, yes, we are far from attaining equality. Sometimes it does even feel like we are going one step forward and two steps backward. The conversations and actions which bring us equality need to happen all year round. A day where we acknowledge a problem, which we are already aware of does not help. Perhaps international women’s day needs to be defined. Maybe it needs to have an actionable goal attached to it. For example, it could become a day when women are encouraged to speak about their gender-specific problems to their male counterparts without being judged. Just make it a no-judgment day, give a blank slate. The current model of women’s day is not creating a long-lasting impact. We need to reconsider its value. The day after women’s day is a perfect time, to have this conversation. Instead of just one day, we can try to keep the momentum going for the whole year.

Let me know what you think about women’s day in the comments.