International Women’s Month - A Time for Celebration and Mobilization

Note from the Author:

Hi Everyone! My name is Nina Plateroti and I currently serve as Vice President of GWULWT. I have the honor of writing this blog post during International Women’s History Month. I struggled to decide what to write about this month (how do you properly celebrate women’s history and mobilize in a month, let alone in 500 words?). But, I hope this post is able to scratch the surface and reminds us all that the fight for intersectional gender equality continues far past March, 2022.

International Women’s Month (IWM) means many different things to many different people. In Italy, it is customary to give women in your life beautiful yellow mimosa flowers as a symbol of strength and sensibility on International Women’s Day (IWD). If you were in Seoul for IWD this year, you may have witnessed members of the Korean Women’s Hotline handing out yellow roses to celebrate the day. Throughout many countries, you may see people wearing purple (the color internationally recognized to symbolize women) or orange (the color meant to signify the end of violence against women). For women old enough to remember when they did not have the right to their own credit card in the United States (prior to 1974) or the right to vote in Switzerland (prior to 1971), IWM can be viewed as a testament to progress made. For women who continue to experience the dismantling of their rights, whether they be women in Texas fighting for their right to choose or trans women throughout the world demanding the protection of their human rights, IWM is a reminder of all the work that still needs to be done. For women living through conflict, IWM may not even cross their minds as they fight every day to survive through the countless gendered war crimes and the compound vulnerabilities inherent to conflict. For many of us who dedicate much of our studies and work to the advancement of women’s rights, March is a time of celebration and mobilization.

A common thread through many cultures and contexts, however, is a recommitment to the intersectional advancement of women’s rights. As I write this blog women and girls in Afghanistan do not have the right to receive an education, a number of women and girls in the Edo State of Nigeria are being trafficked for sexual exploitation, and women and girls all over the world continue to face oppression at the hands of age old patriarchal structures. While we have made progress, we still have a long way to go in fully achieving intersectional gender equality. Much of this hard work involves dismantling our own “inner-patriarch” to quote Dr. Shirley Graham, Director of the Elliott School Gender Equality Initiative in International Affairs. In almost all cultures, women are socialized into certain gender stereotypes before they even understand the difference between a man and a woman, let alone the fluidity of gender. We internalize these expectations and, speaking for myself, struggle to shake them off. These biases do not only affect our self-perception, but our perception of others. As we recommit ourselves to the advancement and protection of women’s rights within our own communities and our broader national/international communities, let us remember that this important work starts within ourselves and understanding our own incredible potential for growth and change.