Comrades, our holiday has arrived! Reframing International Women’s Day

But it would be unfair to deride the Russian Women’s Day too much. Diverging in the opposite direction from its socialist roots, IWD – always without the (W) – was first observed in the West and ‘globally’ after 1977 as part of a UN resolution which proclaimed a UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace, to be observed – usually on March 8 – by Member States. [2]

In this incarnation, I(W)WD is also largely a ceremonial occasion, claiming to celebrate ‘the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women’, and marking ‘a call to action for accelerating gender parity’. This year’s ‘theme’ is #PledgeforParity, and its partners include large corporations such as BP and EY, reinforcing the necessity of the removal of ‘Working’ from the day’s title. [3]

These fairly significant deviations in both contexts highlight the particular problems of framing International Women’s Day in a global context still affected by Cold War bipolarity. In former socialist states, the inherent contradictions of policies rooted in class-based ideology, paying little attention to gender, allow gender essentialism to flourish. [4]

Evidently, though, these flaws are not unique to I(W)WD in former socialist states. As a platform for endorsing gender equality in a late capitalist global economy, IWD is a ‘sexual decoy’: a ceremonial fanfare to the advancement of women within neoliberal societies and economies. Hashtags, races and EY’s Pledge for Parity campaign all severely undermine the drive to eradicate sexual and gendered inequality. [5] The roots and resolve of I(W)WD to eradicate social, political and economic gender inequality are clouded by the global political and economic context in which it exists.

Executed within the infrastructures of Western ruling elites, mobilisation around ‘global’ gender issues constitutes a new form of empire building – the drive to civilise acting as a distraction from the inadequacies of the performance of gender equality in the West. Initiatives originating outside Western Europe remain largely unacknowledged. Instead, women residing outside the region are ‘rescued’ from local patriarchal tyrannies by large-scale corporate initiatives.

As such, IWD in the West is, though arguably well intentioned, disrupted by forces of corporate globalisation. By focusing solely on turning women in countries of conflict into ‘entrepreneurs’, many of the root causes of inequality are brushed under the mat, as are the parallel, intersectional social and economic issues relating to inequality worldwide. 

These problems of neoliberalism aren’t necessarily resolved by an intrinsic reverence to International (Working) Women’s Day’s socialist roots. The picture of woman as mother, the shoulder upholding man, which evolves from a strict adherence to class solidarity alone, is equally as unhelpful. But, a move away from the competitive race for goods which has typically been at the helm of the day in the last 40 years, is crucial.

On the other side of the same coin however, by revering the historical and political roots of I(W)WD, are we expecting too much from a single day? Many of the activities carried out under the umbrella of I(W)WD are substantial and incredibly important. These include, but aren’t limited to, raising the profile of campaigns against FGM, and a wide variety of local grassroots initiatives worldwide: from the ‘mapping’ of women’s voices by Art with Heart and Girl Gang Manchester, to the work of Sauti Ya Wanawake (Voice of Women), in Kenya, and political rallies in Morocco, Madrid, Tsibili, Tunis and Warsaw addressing issues of inequality in women’s lived experiences globally.

But in order to frame I(W)WD in a way that emphasises these triumphs and supports these initiatives, we need to somehow locate it within this ideological bipolarity. Perhaps rather than ‘fitting’ ordinary women into pre-existing narratives that endorse essentialism, or sponsoring events with the finances of large corporations, for I(W)WD to have any resonance its activities must instead focus on addressing these issues, divorcing its activities from the institutions that perpetuate its lack of success, and generating momentum year-round, providing an annual rallying point.