IWD 2022

(Side note: Has it really been a whole year since I last posted?!)

I’ve been trying to think about how to write about International Women’s Day (IWD) for 2022. 

The theme, Changing Climates: Equality today for a sustainable tomorrow, gives lots of scope to this about how intersectional politics of sex/gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, colonisation, ageism, and ableism, link with ecological issues that I’m interested in, as well as the wars, natural disasters, and the pandemic that are dominating my news feed.

As it happens, in my region we’ve been living in catastrophic weather events. I’ve found them deeply distressing and I’ve one of the folk who has been safe and dry, so I can’t imagine what these events have been like for those who will continue to feel the traumatic impacts for many years to come. 

For me, IWD is about more than women, because fighting for greater equity for women necessarily includes equity for non-binary and trans people too. Certainly, I’m not here to write a celebratory post that congratulates everyone on the improvements in women’s, non-binary and trans peoples’ lives. Instead, I’m going to reflect on a couple of issues that align with the IWD 2022 theme, Changing Climates: Equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.

Equity, not equality

Each year, the work of IWD falls largely to women, but like men, we’re tired. I mean, given what is going on in the world, at the very least, we’re tired. But IWD should not be ‘women’s work’, because a more inclusive world for women means a more inclusive world for everyone.

Or it should.

As a feminist, I believe we need to pay close attention to the critiques of both IWD and feminism by Indigenous, First Nations, Black and diverse women of colour, as well as non-binary and trans people of colour. We need to pay attention, and we need to attend to the critiques they make, and the limitations they show us. 

And so I come to the argument that feminism – all activism, in fact – should be about equity not equality. Equality is about buying into the status quo, when really, we’re about changing it. I don’t want to live in a world that has been created to privilege men; just as Indigenous and First Nations people don’t want to fit into the settler-colonial models of society and governance that have displaced them from their lands and waterways; just as LGBTIQ+ people don’t want to fit into heteronormative models of love and family. We all want to world to change to accommodate more diverse ways of being and living, to account for forms of justice and repatriation. 

Value women’s work managing climate events

I live in Brisbane and grew up on the north coast of New South Wales, regions which have been experiencing a catastrophic weather event. I want to immediately recognise that I have been safe during this time and my home remains un-flooded, so the material effects on me are very limited. I found the events very distressing and stressful, but I have not suffered the loss of my home. However, the effects on my friends and loved ones in these communities I care deeply about are severe.

Almost all of the work rescuing people, cleaning their homes and coordinating donation and evacuation centres has been led by the communities themselves. And this is amazing. What I’ve noticed is, that the recognition so far has largely gone to men. The efforts of surfers and celebrities with resources, and blokes with fishing boats on the dangerous waters are heroic and to be recognised. But the people doing the less photogenic work looking after the evacuation and donation centres are often women. While it’s great that fit, attractive, male celebrities and athletes get gratitude for their work, they’re also highly resourced people who have often enjoyed years of community support. The women volunteering in the donation centres are dealing with the less dramatic aspects of disaster, but their work is as essential as the daring rescues on the water. If anyone, my thoughts this IWD go to those women, across the world, who are doing this kind of care work at the places of the greatest impacts of climate change. In this, I include their care for the creatures they look after –wildlife, pets and other animals. 

The pressure on women to reduce global waste 

Quite rightly, there is a lot of focus on reducing waste, and our consumption of products such as single use plastics and fast fashion. These pressures should fall most heavily on nations that have been long industrialised, which have most benefited from resource extraction, and those which rely on the labour – often indentured or unpaid – of vulnerable people in less wealthy nations. That is, they should fall on nations like Australia. 

And yet, the pressure to make change often falls on individuals to not drive, to not fly, to not eat meat. Even more, there are pressures to change our consumption habits at a more domestic level; changes which are reasonable to promote, but which create huge levels of pressure on women. The argument to make switches from single use to reusable products is really fair, but since women still manage most domestic labour, then issues that relate to shopping, recycling, and composting fall most heavily on them. Time and labour saving menstrual products, disposable nappies, and cleaning products are still largely the responsibility of women, so the labour of the transition to reusables is on them. Scrubbing the labels from glass jars, cleaning tins, crushing cans, sorting what can be recycled and what can’t is time consuming and laborious. Companies, not individuals, should be responsible for making recycling and reusing easier. 

At the same time, while women have long faced pressures about their bodies and looks – and these pressures differ across cultures – we are now under pressure to give up the very beauty products we’ve been encouraged to use. Plastic packaging, micro-beads, and polluting chemicals are some of the effects of beauty product industries, and while I’m not advocating for makeup and so on, and we need to recognise how the pressures around these product changes often fall to women to shoulder. Also, these products are sometimes personal joys in difficult times. 

And so…

Overall, I suppose, this post does not do much to celebrate women in the ways IWD has come to represent. But I hope that in talking about some of the issues that continue to shape women’s everyday lives, this is a post that is love-filled and celebratory.

For IWD 2022, I will take time to read some of the many thousands of words that have been written by women, and to listen to the stories they are telling. I will take the time to reflect on their optimism and fears, their anger and frustrations, and their complaints. I will respect their words and work, and their contributions to the ongoing fight for equity.