On the 8 of March is the International Women's Day, or more precisely the International Day for Women's Rights. It's not a day to celebrate women, it's a day to raise the awareness of the inequalities still very important between men and women. It's a day for women to demonstrate, united all together, their angriness, their willingness to fight against the patriarchal society.
Many women have integrated unconsciously that they need to take care of their household, their family: they are subjected to a mental load that men don’t have knowledge of. They are in charge of the childcare, they go to pick up their children at school, they think about what make for dinner, they cook, they clean for the family, they are going groceries shopping... Indeed, women still take on most of the unpaid care work at home, whether they are employed or not. According to the Beijing Platform for Action report, 92% of EU women are regular carers-several days a week, while 68% of men provide unpaid care work with this frequency.
Besides that, the unpaid and invisible work that women do is viewed as unproductive and “not working”. But why? Because they don’t earn money by taking care of the household? And according to today’s society, not earning money means being useless for the society.
Most of the time, women don’t have the opportunity to have an important professional life because people would blame them to not be good mothers or good wives. However, a woman shouldn’t be seen as a mom or a wife at first, she should be seen as her own person. Moreover, as you probably know not every woman dreams of having a settled family in a big house. Therefore, one of the first things to get rid of this social issue is to create father leaves as long as the mother ones, to not imply that the woman should take care of the household. And instead of educating girls as they should be caring, discreet or elegant, we should try the gender-neutral education (if you want to know more about this topic, here is the link you should click on: http://evs-mediart.weebly.com/blog/gender-neutral-education-a-dream).
The International Women's Day is just a day, once a year, to remember the necessity to fight, EVERY DAY, ALL TOGETHER, against gender inequalities and stereotypes omnipresent in our society. Women of the world, unite and fight for your rights!
Many women have integrated unconsciously that they need to take care of their household, their family: they are subjected to a mental load that men don’t have knowledge of. They are in charge of the childcare, they go to pick up their children at school, they think about what make for dinner, they cook, they clean for the family, they are going groceries shopping... Indeed, women still take on most of the unpaid care work at home, whether they are employed or not. According to the Beijing Platform for Action report, 92% of EU women are regular carers-several days a week, while 68% of men provide unpaid care work with this frequency.
Besides that, the unpaid and invisible work that women do is viewed as unproductive and “not working”. But why? Because they don’t earn money by taking care of the household? And according to today’s society, not earning money means being useless for the society.
Most of the time, women don’t have the opportunity to have an important professional life because people would blame them to not be good mothers or good wives. However, a woman shouldn’t be seen as a mom or a wife at first, she should be seen as her own person. Moreover, as you probably know not every woman dreams of having a settled family in a big house. Therefore, one of the first things to get rid of this social issue is to create father leaves as long as the mother ones, to not imply that the woman should take care of the household. And instead of educating girls as they should be caring, discreet or elegant, we should try the gender-neutral education (if you want to know more about this topic, here is the link you should click on: http://evs-mediart.weebly.com/blog/gender-neutral-education-a-dream).
The International Women's Day is just a day, once a year, to remember the necessity to fight, EVERY DAY, ALL TOGETHER, against gender inequalities and stereotypes omnipresent in our society. Women of the world, unite and fight for your rights!
CÉLIA DOMEN
Célia is a French volunteer involved in the International Women's Day.
