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Female every day
Twenty-nine years ago I celebrated my first International Women’s Day. The year was 1992. I was a 20 year-old college sophomore in the United States, and International Women’s Day had been in existence for 81 years.
Why did it take twenty years of me living as a girl and young woman in the world to learn about the only day of the year dedicated to celebrating women globally and heralding international calls to action for our collective equality?
I know the answer lies in the long tail of patriarchy. Yet, that doesn’t satisfy my curiosity about how patriarchy does what it does. How did an entire system activate and operate for so many decades to keep International Women’s Day outside of the list of annual celebrations that were observed in my family, my school, my community when I was a girl? What is that system silencing and shutting down today? A torrent of examples pours out of my mind: all the patriarchal insults I and the girls and women around me experience. It is overwhelmingly easy to conjure up examples of patriarchy at work today.
And so today — 110 years after the birth of this day — I’m thinking about all of this. I’m celebrating International Women’s Day this year by sharing the ocean of thoughts and feelings that are coming up for me on this one day of being female in the world: March 8, 2021.
I’ll start with the irony of the robocall I got today as I was writing this piece. The call came in at the same time I was expecting a call, so I answered it. Making the mental pivot from a head and heart filled with reflections on what it feels like today, on this very day, to be a woman and a mother to daughters and a female entrepreneur, I heard a man’s voice say “Hey guys, can I speak to the parents of ____?” referencing one of my daughters by first name. Starting a call to me like that followed by the mention of one of my daughter’s names was a double threat to this mama. My reply was “No. No you definitely cannot. Who is this? Why are you starting a call with ‘Hey guys…’ and where are you calling from?” He responded with a familiar refrain when I exercise my feminist boundaries: “Whoa! You need to take a chill pill.” I didn’t chill. I persisted: “Who is calling? Where are you calling from?” to which he responded “Forget it! You’re a bitch! You suck *ss!” before he hung up.
