One hundred and one years ago, the first International Women’s Day was observed on March 19 in four countries in Europe – Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, following the establishment a year earlier at a meeting in Copenhagen of a ‘women’s day’. Though its primary focus was achieving universal suffrage for women—too many of whom did not have the right to vote at that time—the day was also being set aside to honour the movement for women’s rights.
The more than 100 women from 17 countries around the world who attended the Copenhagen meeting of Socialist International, unanimously adopted the proposal, which also sought to have the day internationally recognized. The day subsequently began to be observed on March 8.
After more than a century, women’s suffrage is still not quite universal. Women in Saudi Arabia finally gained the right to vote and run for office in municipal elections last September; they are fighting for the right to drive.
In Lebanon, women must show proof of at least elementary level education before they are allowed to vote; there is no such rule for men.
In Vatican City, only cardinals vote in the papal conclave (election of the pope); there are no women cardinals.
Meanwhile, every day in every country ordinary women are doing extraordinary things; making history in some cases, as they have done for centuries, in the ongoing battle for women to be able to participate in society on an equal footing with men. These women struggle in various ways: they speak out; they form and volunteer in organizations to help other women; they protest and lobby for change; they educate and where they can, they move to have laws passed. They do not do these things for accolades, but because they must; because they refuse to sit back and allow their sisters to be trodden on, beaten, marginalized and discriminated against simply because of their gender.
It is because women have to fight for what should be their inalienable rights that International Women’s Day continues to be relevant. It must rankle, therefore, when men, however well-meaning they might be, pay lip service to women’s struggles on this one day, but blindly continue to be part of the system which oppresses them on the other 364/365 days of the year.
Global statistics reveal that in addition to having to constantly prove themselves in order to take what should be their rightful places in society, women perform 66 per cent of the world’s work and produce 50 per cent of its food but earn ten per cent of overall income and own one per cent of property. Around the world, too, women hold only 19% of parliamentary seats and just 16 (8.5%) of the 188 elected leaders in the world are women. While these are disturbing statistics, the most horrific is that violence against women now causes more deaths and disabilities among the global female population aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, road traffic accidents and war.
Guyana contributes in a very real way to these statistics. Way too many women continue to work under less than humane conditions for mere pittances; security guards, housemaids and salesgirls top the list. Last year’s elections showed patriarchy in all its might. After Valerie Lowe was unceremoniously, shamelessly and unfairly shunted out of The United Force, there were no other women candidates for the top political posts. And violence against women has become a raging epidemic, which is not being treated with the radical medicine it so obviously needs.
Guyanese women will join their sisters around the world today in observing this milestone and lauding the accomplishments made here. However, they are only too aware of the imbalances that remain and that even in the midst of celebration, the struggle continues.