Equal is Equal

Equal is Equal.   To me, it is a simple principle. Women and men should have equal rights, and equal pay, have equal representation at work and in government, bear equal domestic and childrearing responsibility. We should be equal in the eyes of the law and equal in the minds of the one another.  International Women’s Day (IWD) made me wonder should we have an International Men’s day? What is the point of  IWD?   I don’t like to be called out separately from “the men” and IWD seems to be yet another way of setting us apart.

Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Administrative Professional’s day have always bothered me.   Holidays or special days like these allow us to effectively “check a box” in order to show our appreciation for or to remember specific people in our lives; people who (in most cases) deserve our appreciation and respect every single day of the year.  Other holiday’s like Presidents Day, Independence Day, Memorial Day, and most of the religious and national holidays around the globe commemorate something that happened.   Someone was born or someone died.   A war started or ended.   Independence was won. People overcame hardship or achieved a goal. A person or an event is honored.

I don’t think that we are celebrating the completion of anything on International Women’s Day. There is so much more work to do when it comes to getting women to be equal in anything – business, government, law.   We have yet to #bringbackourgirls. Rape is still a weapon of war. Governments led by men are working to pass and uphold laws that govern a woman’s body. There aren’t enough hours in this International Women’s Day for a person to gain a complete understanding of the issues in this battle to make equal really equal.   We can’t just “check the box” and think about it for a day.   This is something we all need to be thinking about and acting on every single day of the year.   So in that regard, I can’t say I am a huge fan of International Women’s Day.

I have yet to see, in any of the events surrounding this day or in any of the campaign’s working toward equality for women, an acknowledgment that as we push for “equal” we will have to overcompensate for a few decades.  It seems that no one wants to say it out loud. Maybe it’s because the amount of work needed to arrive at “equal” is daunting,  but we have to start somewhere.  Known for my candor and my desire to move things along by saying what no one else will say;  let me say it.   For a period of time we will:

• Have to hire more women than men, promote more women than men and stop adding board seats in order to give “just one” to a woman,
• Have to elect more women to public office so there are fewer men to pass laws diminishing our rights as human beings,
• Have to  award more Science, Technology, Engineering and Math scholarships to girls than to boys,
• Have to put more military force into protecting women and girls around the world than we do into protecting oil deposits and mineral rights.

It is a given that this will not sit well with men.   Missing the irony, many will say it is unfair and discriminatory to men.   Many men will never agree to the plan and will not participate. Women will have to begin the task of overcompensating to get to equal.   This is why I promote the idea that women need to put women first.

While it may be hard for men to accept it, they will survive just as women have for the last, well….  forever.

And if it gets really bad – we can always give them their own holiday.

#heelpower #standtogether