Today is International Women’s Day, a day that celebrates a struggle women have gone through and fought for many decades (or centuries perhaps) to ensure that women would have equity in terms of the freedoms granted to them and the men in their society. It has been a fight – an ongoing one – for the right to vote in what is called an electoral democracy, for the right to equal pay for the same jobs, for the right to the same educational opportunities, for the right to decide for themselves the kind of work we wanted, and the kind of life we wanted, the timing and extent to which we want children, where and with whom. It’s also a fight for the feeling of having entirely free choice of a favourite colour, a favourite toy, a favourite sport, a favourite kind of clothing, and so on. A fight for education and work ethic and recreation options to reflect this freedom. A fight for independent mobility options being equally a part of this: in a car-dependent context, do women have access to a car in equal measure to men? What is the role of public transport for enabling equal opportunities to move, or to choose not to move (and still have access to all we need)? And then, what feels safe for women and girls, when they move – and how can we address this issue at the root, while also providing more immediate solutions for dangerous discriminatory situations? These are some of the questions this day makes me think of. Wendy has published several articles on related themes together with colleagues (see aqui e aqui, for example). Also see Nourhan Bassam’s work, aqui, for example.

The struggle is also, in my view, a fight for men to feel those same freedoms we wish for women to truly feel. That is, to also be able to enjoy colours, toys, sports, clothes that might in more divisive contexts be considered “unmanly” or some other such “insult”. There have been many men in history that have perpetrated crimes against women knowingly and wielded unfair power against them. But there are also so many men who have been victims of the same system that expects “being a man” to mean that they must act in certain ways, for instance un-emotional and harsh, and to also lead lives they do not wish for.

And for many of those who call themselves feminists – including myself – the struggle for women is one that has everything to do with the countless struggles for humans in general to not be discriminated against due to some physical feature (skin colour, weight, capacities to see, walk, hear and so on), or due to a given preference such as that for a romantic or sexual partner.

This is not the place for expanding into details on these topics, as they already have been expanded on in so many places by so many people more expert on this than I. So instead of going on, I will only share some sources that have been inspiring for me on this topic, some more fun, some more serious, at the end of this post.

In the meantime, let me refer you to the latest feature, which speaks of the fascinating work of two strong women, Rachel Donald e Sarah Stein Lubrano.

Also stay tuned for an update on our first pilot workshop, which took place yesterday and was wonderfully fun, interesting and inspiring. Thank you already to all participants again! A post on the workshop will follow soon.

Recommendations for this day (sorry for the mostly WEIRD bias, happy to get tips for non-WEIRD recommendations for International Women’s Day in the comments! Thanks!):

Movies: Volver (2006), Made in Dagenham (2010), Suffragette (2015), Hidden Figures (2016), Period.End of Sentence. (2018)

Song: Das bisschen Haushalt, sagt mein Mann (1977)

Speech: Emma Watson’s inagural speeck for the HeforShe Campaign at the UN (2014)

Book: Les filles peuvent le faire…AUSSI! / Les garçons peuvent le faire…AUSSI! (2019)