We haven't come a long way, honey buns

Happy International Women’s Day 2014!  

“Inspiring Change,” is the theme of this year’s celebration, according to www.internationalwomensday.com . The site explains the history of the day and lists celebratory events scheduled around the world. 

There are 254 events scheduled here in the United States. In case you were wondering, that’s almost 200 less than event frontrunner Great Britain, which lists 418. Shame, shame, shame on you, USA.  Rounding out the top four are Australia with 158, followed by Canada, 151. 

More than seventy nations across the world, from Antigua to Zambia, are hosting a total of 1337 events this weekend in honor of me, my daughters, and all the other humans out there who share the same type of plumbing but who don’t share equally when it comes to life, liberty, and pursuits of happiness.   

  

There’s a searchable list of international events on the IWD website  I clicked through it randomly, expecting to find parades or maybe proclamations, or at least some lighthearted partying festivals, sort of in the vein of the cutesy pastel Google doodle I found on my home page today. It was the Google doodle that cued me in to the fact that International Women’s Day actually exists. I never knew about it until this morning. Isn’t that interesting? And yet it’s a day that’s been celebrated for close to or over 100 years, depending on the site you get your info from. 

                                            Compare the UK amounts to the "other" total.
 

Ethiopia lists one event, a 5k road race expected to draw 10,000 women and girls. There’s still time to register. The race isn’t until tomorrow, March 9. I hope the race is still around in ten years. I’ll be retired by then and won’t have a school vacation schedule dictating my travel plans. I’d love to run it.  

Most events are in the form of talks and seminars. Some seem a little sketchy and I had to wonder if they were listed more to look like the country was doing some participating or if perhaps event sponsors were looking to make some bucks. Argentina for example has one event, the launching of a website on beauty and wellness; Wellness here meaning beauty, not health. Yes, a change of eye shadow is exactly the inspiration we women are searching for. Be the change, the lilac-hued change? No thanks.

But then there’s Bangladesh with seven events. One is an informational session on cervical and breast cancers. It’s being held at a university. Seems that one might be on the level, though I don’t have the bucks or time to get there and check it out. 

I noticed that Afghanistan and Iraq are missing from the searchable results list, which prompted me to then google countries that are dangerous for women. The first result took me to a United Nations site, unwomen.org, with this somber heading: Ending Violence Against Women: A Pandemic in Diverse Forms.  

I learned that according to international data, 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence. I have to wonder even now, why the or? Sexual violence IS physical violence.  That wondering aside, the 35 percent figure might be off quite a bit. The site says that in surveys by country, 70 percent of women report physical and/or sexual violence.  So are "just" four out of ten women abused? Or are we talking seven out of ten? Hmmm. My gut says go with the bigger number.

I wonder about the nature of statistics. I wonder if that figure includes the trend of aborting female fetuses in China? I wonder if denying women access to birth control and AIDs education fits in those categories? And what about denying education of any kind whatsoever, denying the basics of reading, writing, math? Studies show that educated women generally live better and raise healthier kids than women with little or no education. Surely, denying education should be classified as a form of violence too.  

I clicked on another button and got a UN report entitled “Women’s Land Rights Are Human Rights.” I had to smirk at that. Got that right. My great-grandmother had to get married when she was just twelve years old. No, she wasn’t pregnant. It was 1880s Ireland. Her father had died suddenly. She had no brothers. It was just great-grandma and her mother. Problem was that women at the time weren’t allowed to own land. This was British law because Ireland was under English rule at the time.

Family legend holds that there were no available men my great-great-grandmother’s age, so little Catherine was called upon to save the day. The man she married promised to hold off on touching her until her eighteenth birthday. Supposedly, he kept his promise. Then they went right to it and she eventually popped out a dozen kids, and they had kids and so on and now we pretty much own Ireland. Okay, that last part’s a lie, but it’s true that there are a lot of descendants. About half of us are women and almost all of us are college-educated, though most of us females still labor for true equality.   

I think of the Sex and the City episode from ten years ago, when Miranda buys her own condo. She has to check off her marital status – single. The mortgage officer asks if the down payment is coming from her father.  The surprise on his face when she responds with “just me” I’m sure is funny to some. To me it was just plain sad. 

That episode reminded me of the time I called in response to a Sears cabinet re-facing advertisement. I was all set to finalize the details of an appointment, then the sales guy on the other end said this, “Don’t you need to check with your husband to make sure the time is okay with him?” 

I was divorced but didn’t see how that was anybody’s business but mine. I asked why my husband needed to be there. 

The guy replied that it was store protocol to always have the husband present, because they’d found that lots of women went behind their husbands’ backs and set up these appointments without checking. Then the deal would fall through and it ended up being a gigantic waste of time for the Sears sales staff.  

This phone conversation didn’t happen one hundred years ago. This was not even two decades ago. This was just a few years back.  Needless to say, I hung up on the guy, but not before screaming something bad that I can’t write down here. Not because I’m ashamed, I’m not. I just don’t remember what I said. You could argue with me that he was just repeating store policy so I was out of line yelling at him. Here's my reply to that: Bullshit.  

It all worked out, for me anyhow. Instead of getting the cabinets resurfaced, I ended up getting the whole kitchen redone.  Too bad for Sears, though. I was ready and willing to drop a ton of cash. All of it my own. 

You’ve come a long way baby? That was the tag line of a Virginia Slims cigarette ad from way back when I was growing up. I can still hum the tune of the commercial that used to play on television and radio back before they banned those ads because of health concerns, not because the ads were sexist or untrue. 

See, as for equality for women, we’ve moved along a bit, here in the United States at least. But a long way?  I’m not buying it. 

And one more thing. Baby? Really? If you want my business, don’t infantilize me. I’m not a baby. I’m a human. I’m an adult. I’m just like you. In fact, there’s a good chance I might be even better.

                                                   Ummm. No. We haven't, honey buns.