“Women Deserve More” - An IWD Thought Piece By Taylah Spirovski
Women.
Courageous. Creative. Resourceful. Intellectual. Intuitive. Wild. Resilient. Indomitable.
International Women's Day (IWD) is an important marker that celebrates the bravery and determination of women who changed the course of history, as well as those now and in the future, who continue to demand better and fiercely pursue their levels. When we speak of women, we speak of every woman. We speak of Bla(c)k women, transgender women, disabled women, migrant and refugee women, queer women and all women with varying lived experiences, who continue to enrich our lives with their remarkably diverse perspectives of the world. We must do everything in our power to nourish and protect these women, our women.
IWD was born from the recognition of the legal and societal limits to opportunity, autonomy, access, wealth and power. A long-held, indoctrinated patriarchal mantra that women are less than or as Simone de Beauvoir has theorised, only relevant and defined as they are “relative to man”. There are deep fissures within our legal system, democracy and culture that have maintained this inequality up until today and for more IWDs to come. In Australia, the reality is, women's interests are invisible or peripheral in certain legislation. The lack of substantive equality and pervasive gender bias have bolstered barriers to political leadership (among many other limitations) and most disturbing of them all, gender-based violence is absolutely endemic.
In Australia, one in three women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15.
In Australia, one in five women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.
In Australia, one woman per week dies at the hands of a violent intimate partner.
In many spaces women are living with very real and imminent threats of violence - including women at the highest levels of government and private practice, where they are still struggling to establish credibility.
Laurie Penny once said, "while we all worry about the glass ceiling, there are millions of women standing in the basement - and the basement is flooding". The patriarchy has placed marginalised women right in our blind spot, and sometimes, the actions (or omissions) of privileged women keep them there. ‘Women supporting women’ means women amplifying the voices of vulnerable women - not cowering away from what you might be doing (unintentionally) to feed power structures working to silence their perspectives. Intersectionality (and intersectional data) is critical to understanding the way structural and systemic discrimination has exacerbated the negative experiences of marginalised women. These women are the ones that continue to experience emotional and economic poverty in the shadows, while many privileged (often white) women enjoy certain freedoms and have the opportunity to actualise most of their rights.
Measuring gender equality, based on whether-or-not ‘white,’ ‘well-off’ and ‘educated’ women can ‘have it all,’ is not an appropriate metric.
Many marginalised women, like our First Nations women, face significant challenges to the full enjoyment of their human rights. First Nations women have racism at the root of their life experiences - racism in healthcare, education, employment and the list goes on.
Indigenous women have organised at local, national and international levels to address the specific issues and setbacks they face, and yet people and governments are still not properly listening to them. More often than not, we are listening to respond rather than listening to understand. First Nations people, First Nations women, carry an essential part of our common humanity. They are the caretakers of this unceded land and they are irreplaceable diversity. They deserve justice, truth-telling and decolonisation. In the upcoming federal election this year, we hold the power to elect representatives who will work to deliver First Nations women their collective and individual land and resource rights, and address the unconscionable levels of domestic violence, among other things.
The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly exposed long-lived, systemic social problems. Specifically, it has revealed the gendered divisions of labour, the gendered understanding of household production and the way domestic and care responsibilities are disproportionately shouldered by women. Regrettably, many countries were ill-equipped to tackles these issues off the back of the pandemic, predominantly due to their lack of prior embracement of feminist economics in policy, funding and investment. The pursuit of sustainable and socially just economies and societies begins with gender-responsive and gender-mainstreamed law, policy and culture. It's time to discard nascent initiatives, exclusionary politics and environmental destruction.
In order to effect transformative change, data needs to be intersectional; health, education and the informal sector need adequate government support and protection; and the investment in social policies need to be steered by community. The voices of diverse women should always be driving the narrative and leading the strategies and solutions working to address their issues.
To be a woman is to be a part of a collective, powerful force with ageless knowing, endless love and passionate creativity. It is to be united by common strength, while remaining beautifully individual and multi-faceted. It is the deepest and truest relationship I know. It is community. It is everything.
