Happy International Women’s Day!
Huh? International what? Never fear my dears, gather round and let me tell you all about it.
International Women’s Day (IWD) is a day when women from across the global demand to have their voices heard, and the validity of their labour seen. It is historically a day of protest and strike, women down tools and take to the streets to demonstrate the importance of their labour in the home and the workplace. It is a day of connection, a day to celebrate our sisterhood regardless of the divides in society that keep us apart. It is a day to embrace our differences and our similarities. It is a day to simply be a woman.
IWD is rumoured to have started in 1909 to commemorate the 1857 New York garment workers strike. However, it was first officially celebrated in 1911 by over 1 million people across Europe and in the USA. The date of March 8th was chosen following the arrest of the wonderful Sylvia Pankhurst, in 1914, when she was en route to a suffrage march in London; her incarceration cemented the date in history.
From then on IWD has been marked internationally on 8th March, initially only by the Communist counties of the 20th Century. In 1917 Russian textile works went on strike and took to the streets demanding ‘bread and peace.’ Seven days later Russian women were given the right to vote and Nicholas II abdicated. Some view the strike and demands as precipitating factors of the Russian Revolution. China celebrated IWD from 1922 and made it an official public holiday in 1949 in which women work a half day.
The United Nations firsts honoured IWD from 1975, but worldwide celebrations began in the 90s. IWD has been an annual event since, and the party is still going!
Feminism has made strides and gained ground unimaginable to the Suffragettes and the first-wave feminists but there is still work to be done. IWD is about acknowledging our achievements, raising our voices and planning action for the year ahead. We only have to think back to 2017 to see the difference a year can make.
Despite our advances women still face oppression. To use the historical theme of labour and our theme of caring, women in the UK perform 60% more unpaid domestic labour than men. This work can range from anything to cooking and cleaning to caring for relatives and providing the majority of childcare; work that someone could be employed to do if the finances were available – they certainly aren’t leisure activities! On average women work 26 unpaid hours per week, while men average around 16 hours. Comparatively, those on maternity leave perform 60 hour per week unpaid labour week, and while they may be receiving maternity leave pay that is a significant reduction in hourly rate!
Women make up the majority of the 7 million carers in the UK, around 58%. This doesn’t seem like a large majority when you look at it objectively. However, 1 in 5 carers give up employment to be primary carers; which when you consider women more readily leave work to care for poorly relatives or children, by comparison to men, puts this more into perspective. Women of Colour and those from minority backgrounds who perform caring roles often have limited access to support services, are more likely to be "hidden carers" and have reduced uptake of benefits. The carers allowance averages a workers wage to around £1.77 per hour despite the economic value of female carers in the UK sitting at roughly £77bn per year. To then add the total annual value of UK unpaid labour - £1.01tn (yes that is a t not a b, you did read that right!) we can begin to see how undervalued and underpaid women’s domestic and caring labour is. These statistics are from a few years back but they are the most up-to date and show we still have a long way to go.
So carers, nurses, midwives, students; today on IWD make sure you take your breaks. Go home and do no housework. Wrap the kids up and have a beautiful spring day out. Sit down and enjoy a cup of tea (and a biscuit) with the person you care for. If you want to go to a protest or event, support or be part of a picket line; if you can’t, share the activities of others across social media and tell your friends. If you are a man, use today open your eyes to the work the women around you do, educate yourself on women’s liberation, take the time to listen to a female carer and really hear her. As female nurses and carers we have just as much right to be part of International Women’s Day, and we have a whole host of achievements over the past 107 years to celebrate!
Let’s get planning to make 2018 amazing!
R xx