Still work to do…

Another Inter­na­tional Women’s Day and no rally in Mel­bourne. Hmmm. Do people think the work’s all been done? I don’t have time to do the sort of extens­ive research I’d usu­ally do for a post like this and quote stats at you all and provide links for all my ref­er­ences; suf­fice to say viol­ence against women is still an enorm­ous issue, from men all over the world who beat their wives and lovers to men in Pakistan who throw acid at girls who dare to go to school or walk the streets unveiled to men in Eng­land who kill their daugh­ters and sis­ters for daring to love or dress in a West­ern way to men in Brazil only this week who get their nine-year-old step-daugh­ters preg­nant and the priests who say that nine-year-old girl should have borne the chil­dren rather than have an abor­tion because it’s God’s will. I have the stat­ist­ics some­where for the per­cent­age of teen­age preg­nan­cies in Brazil that are due to incest. I seem to recall it’s above 70%. It’s disgusting.

As usual, this is not about “man bash­ing”. It’s not about all men – we need our allies. It is about a world that’s broken, a system that’s broken. It’s about need­ing to build rela­tion­ships based on respect and help­ing girls and women grow to respect them­selves enough to walk out, to stand up, to fight back.

Edu­ca­tion is a huge part of that. Again, nor­mally I’d get hard facts for this but edu­cat­ing women has one of the biggest impacts on devel­op­ment. That makes it even more import­ant to help girls get to schools and help fam­il­ies under­stand that keep­ing girls in schools (rather than mar­ry­ing them off in their early teens or bring­ing them back home to work) is really vital.

I’m look­ing at my sleep­ing six-week-old daugh­ter in the arms of her father and I want a better world for her. She is so incred­ibly lucky – she has books already and lives in a coun­try where edu­ca­tion is free, right up until Uni­ver­sity (well, com­pletely free till high school and almost free after that). Her father is so sup­port­ive of gender equal­ity and help­ing her be her best self that this morn­ing he reminded *me* that I should remem­ber to tell her she’s smart and strong as often as I tell her she’s beautiful.

For all my amaz­ing women friends, a glass of wine I raise to you. We still have work to do, per­haps not so much for ourselves now, with our jobs and our com­puters and our rel­at­ively comfy lives, but for our sis­ters else­where, maybe only next door, who are suf­fer­ing still.

And a spe­cial shout-out to antho­lo­gie , who gave birth today to yet another little girl. Strength to you, Mama. Wel­come to the world, baby girl.