I was in the women’s washroom the other day...don’t worry, this isn’t going to get too personal. Anyway, there I was, washing my hands, when the woman next to me, who I’ve passed on occasion, but never spoken to, smiled and said, “Happy International Women’s Day.”
I have to admit, I was surprised. I knew it was International Women’s Day. We had a story about it on the front of that day’s paper, but in my experience, apart from the odd radical, it’s not a common greeting even on March 8th. I said as much to my fellow hand-washer, which launched us into an animated conversation about culture and feminism.
“I work in a Chinese office, so it’s really big for us, we’re being taken out for dinner tonight. And back home in China,” she added, “we...get the afternoon off. That’s standard.”
Really...
I have to admit, I don’t think of China as on the vanguard of women’s rights. In fact, what first comes to mind is the one-child policy (lifted in October 2015) that often saw the infanticide of female babies. She agreed that was a reality, but there was also a culture of celebrating women.
When I think of it, it makes sense that a society that at least purports its genesis is in a socialist worker’s movement would mark International Women’s Day. Working women fighting for labour rights have been integral to socialist movements around the world. We often think of the women’s movement starting with the suffragettes, mainly middle-class women fighting for the vote and they deserve their due. But feminism is also about women on the front lines of the Bolshevik revolution or leading the “Bread and Roses” strike of textile workers in Massachusetts in 1912.
A century later, some of that tension between the two branches of feminism continues to resonate. In the lead-up to a massive women’s march in Washington last month, there was heated debate. Some feminists felt the event had become too disparate and was no longer about women’s issues. The organizers, however, insisted Black Lives Matters, LGBTQ organizations and anti-poverty groups have equal space. The buzz word was “intersectionality,” meaning: the place where different identities (race, gender, class) intersect.
I can’t say I love the word, but I do the concept. Our cover story on Wednesday was about a man advocating for the education of girls, globally. If feminism means equality for all, and not just equal rights but equal opportunities, how can we not address poverty and race.
It might be nice to slot issues into tidy categories, but in my experience, there’s space in the women’s room for all manner of political, cross-cultural debates — not to mention ideas about a half-day off.
