#BreakTheBias
International Women’s Day is so much more than celebrating women’s accomplishments. It’s a day of activism. International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on how far we still need to go for equality for all genders in this world.
Activism
The feminist in me still calls out misogyny and the appalling treatment women continue to receive. I know that I do so from my position of white privilege in the Western World. I live the continued wage gap between men and women. I have experienced the reality of gender-based violence. I have struggled to be heard. To be respected in a room full of mostly male leaders. And yet, I have a roof over my head. I have food on my table. I have the freedom to move about at will…
Ironically, or perhaps more accurately – because of my inherently feminist values, I work in a field that is almost entirely occupied by women. Choosing “women’s work” that is critical to the success of any economy – childcare, early childhood education, family services, and social work, but feels counter intuitive to #BreakingTheBias. I celebrate women who chose non-traditional roles for women. A part of me wants to be them.
Use your privilege
I feel called to speak out from the trenches of women’s fights for equal rights, for safety, and respect. I have always viewed the world through a social justice lens. I am drawn to work helping women who have experienced an amplification of injustice. And from my seat of privilege as an educated white anglophone, I speak out where others may not have the freedom to.
I live in a space where air raid sirens are the stuff of international news stories. I am ever mindful that these stories are of real people. Stories of women. Women who are fighting alongside their neighbours for the very freedom that we often take for granted in North America. Women who are rushing their children into basement shelters in hopes they will see another day when the ever present fear for their lives will be behind them. Women who take on the duty to keep their children safe, while fleeing their homes and leaving behind their husbands, brothers, neighbours – and yes, even other women – who take up arms to defend their lives and their freedom.
Women helping women
It is easy to feel like our fight for equality is trivial compared to another’s fight for freedom. Yet, it is BECAUSE we live this life of freedom and relative wealth, that equality MUST prevail. “Westerners” are not ruled by dictators. We do not face imprisonment for speaking out. We can vote. We have a right to an education… Shouldn’t equality be a given? And if it were so, imagine the work we could do by coming together and assisting those outside of our insulated lives.
I don’t know how we can look to our neighbours and not be affronted that women still fight for equal pay. That our sisters deserve to be respected and absolutely not violated. Or that the decisions made by and for our cities, provinces and country are still made almost exclusively by white anglophone middle-aged men…
On International Women’s Day, and everyday, we must stand together, acknowledge and correct the inequality, and fight for those less fortunate than ourselves. At home and abroad.
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