International Women’s Day 2010 – Reflections from a Women’s College

 A woman is like a tea bag- you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.  –Eleanor Roosevelt

Today marks the 99th International Women’s Day.  The official IWD website describes the day as “a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.”  With this year’s theme, as set by the United Nations “Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all" I am compelled to reflect on my time at Mount Holyoke, the opportunities I have enjoyed, and the state of women’s rights today.    

            It is easy to list the ways women’s rights have seen progress.  We can vote, we make up around 60% of American college graduates, and we have made notable progress in fields across the board.  Last night a woman won the Oscar for Best Director for the first time.  I could go on.  Listing injustices is just as easy.  Women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar and despite being 51% of the population women make up only 17% of America’s legislature.

And since this is International Women’s Day, we must go beyond our borders, bringing up other issues and more statistics.  Rough estimates on human trafficking approximate that every year between 700,000 and 2 million women are trafficked globally.  Domestic trafficking could raise that number as high as 4 million persons annually.  Globally, more than half a million women will die each year due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and many of these deaths are due to issues of health care and health care availability.  Both domestically and abroad there are an overwhelming number of ways to count progress as well as disparities and injustices.

            Studying at a women’s college, though I have not taken classes specifically relating to women’s history, movements or gender studies, has raised new questions for me.  These are questions not only of identity – what it means to be a woman, but also responsibility – what are our obligations to our gender and other relative identities such as race, religion, sexuality etc.

            There are no simple answers.  But as it is March 8th I hope to take some time to wonder what it means to help women, why gender matters and what we can do, to find answers and make efforts for the sake of progress.