International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women's Day! I have put the url of a UN page describing the day a little further, along with a timeline of some key historical dates.

Now generally I am not a fan of such "days." I find them cheesy (and let's face it, most are created to perpetuate our capitalistic and materialistic society):
-Valentines Day: we should always, every day, be choosing to love our loved ones and not taking them for granted.
-Earth Day: we should, every day, be thinking about our actions as they impact the earth and environment.
-Thanksgiving: don't even get me started on how this holiday commemorates the pilgrims and Indians coming together when the Indians were getting screwed. But oh yeah, we should always make time at the end of each day to be thankful for what we have.

So you get my point. But I wanted to take it being International Women's Day as an opportunity to share my recent thoughts related to gender roles and how women have been underdogs in so many ways:

-Women put their bodies at risk, and do the physical work, to give birth, yet children traditionally carry on their father's names.
-Orgasms are not a sure thing for most women whereas they are for most men.
-"Female" characteristics are not valued in society as highly as male characteristics. (e.g. "Don't be such a girl." "You throw like a girl." "Don't be so emotional, you're not a girl.")
-It is habitually expected by most that the mothers stay at home to raise children while the fathers can pursue their careers and dreams and be considered great dads for attending one soccer game, even though the mothers were dealing with the screaming children all day.
-Despite this, mothers generally get blamed for their children's "downfalls." (e.g. Two and a Half Men is a show that portrays this stereotypical idea-the mom is evil, yet dad is nowhere in sight). But duh, parents aren't perfect. If you're going to blame the mom for a neurotic child, then also credit her for the child's strengths.
-Women are victims of domestic violence and rape much more than men.
-In America, the world's greatest superpower, women still make lower wages than men for the same jobs.

So let's take this day to tell the women in our lives that we love them, to credit their work, and find a way to get closer to gender equity.

One way I have recently tried to do this, of which I'm very proud, is writing a proposal to do further research to measure the costs of the no drug use tolerance rule that domestic violence shelters have for their clients. Of course for safety reasons I'm not advocating that clients be allowed to use substances while utilizing shelter services, but I hope to put together a qualitative as well as quantitative argument for the funding of integrated domestic violence shelter and substance abuse treatment programs, such that women who struggle with drug addiction are not put back out on the street with nowhere safe to go. I have passed my proposal on to the coalition against domestic violence and partnered with it in hopes that before I move, I can at least have provided some ideas and inspiration for a bill to go to the state legislature.

I love the Native American proverb: We don't own the earth. We have only borrowed it from our children. The only thing that is certain about our universe is death. Let's take constructive and positive action such that when we are on our death beds, we can feel content knowing we have utilized our abilities and truly done what we can to make our world a better place for future generations.