08.03.2021
Last year International Women's Day got swallowed up by a pandemic that would go on to indisputably prove the actual value of feminine currency. As it turns out our world is held together by nurses and carers, teachers and childcare workers, check out chicks and retail workers, householders and mothers most of all. Overwhelmingly female and grossly underappreciated until the weight of pandemonium fell on their shoulders. Women's labour, so much of it undervalued or unpaid, remains the sinew that holds the backbone of our countries and our worlds upright.
This year IWD breaches the status bro at yet another tenous tipping point. We have come so far but still have so very much further to go. What is becoming even more apparent - though it has always been the bleeding obvious when you are on the wrong side of the stack - is that men still aren't largely on board the equality bandwagon. Don't even bother not-all-menning. Simply saying so isn't a ticket to ride it like you stole it.
Everything begins and ends at home. As kids, this is where we intrinsically learn about the division of labour, the value applied to it, attitudes to women and to men, their distinct rights and too the unwritten rules. It all gets set at home, way before we are confronted with a deeply inequitable world.
The tenets of feminism are equality, liberty and safety. The same rights across the board, equal reward for the same labour, freedom to move and do and be as we please without caveat or adjustment because of the body or world we were born into. Sound familiar? It is the call of all marginalised groups that aren't straight white men.
So if that equality isn't happening at home, behind closed doors when nobody is listening or looking in, it isn't going to appear outside first and come knocking. If we cannot wrangle consent or equally share the housework and the kids, the organising and the shopping, the time and space that makes up our lives. If we have different rules and standards for boys and girls, then what are we even on about? It shouldn't only be charity that begins at home.
Until equality finds a home in yours, it won't ever be a level playing field outside it.
Feminism is equality; politically, culturally, socially and ecomonically. That's it, that simple. If you stand for equality, then you're a feminist.
~ Emma Watson
Words c. Kerrie Basha
Pic: comments below from Tara's Mum Rayna who built this garden bed and took this brilliant photo 9 years ago!