Jonathan Starling On International Women’s Day

[Written by Jonathan Starling]

A Short History

The idea of International Women’s Day has its origins in the 1908 New York garment workers strike, where women protested against working conditions. The day was first celebrated in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America in honour of that strike, and in 1910 the Socialist International adopted it to help focus the struggle for women’s rights and universal suffrage.

Throughout WWI the day served as a rallying point for anti-war protests. In 1917 the women of St Petersburg (Petrograd, then the capital of the Russia) went on strike, demanding ‘Bread and Peace’. This led to the collapse of the Russian Empire, in the February Revolution, a precursor to the October Revolution (forming the Soviet Union), and ultimately helped inspire the 1918 German Revolution, a key moment leading to the end of WWI.

International Women’s Day continued to serve as a rallying point for women’s rights and universal suffrage, and grew in popularity, with the United Nations celebrating it in 1975, as part of the International Women’s Year. In 1977 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring March 8th as an international day for women’s rights and international peace. Each year the UN declares a particular theme; this year the theme is:

“A promise is a promise – Time for action to end violence against women.”

Violence Against Women

International Women’s Day has its origins in opposition to violence; violence in the form of exploitation in the workplace, and violence in the form of imperialist wars and militarism in general.

Today, half of all sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16, and almost three quarters of all women in the world report having experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.

In Bermuda, women are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic and sexual abuse. Beyond violence in the conventional sense, the on-going inequalities in wages between men and women, and the continued disproportionate burden of house-work that falls on women (despite improvements!) in our society could be seen as a form of violence towards women.

Anyone walking down our streets can hardly be blind to the violence of the sexist imagery that confronts one, be it in the objectification of women in magazines, shop windows or posters, let alone the ‘low-level’ harassment of women in the form of cat-calls, whistles, the ‘male gaze’ or patronising comments.

Despite the advances of the last century, and the shining examples of women in leadership roles in our society (such as Lois Browne-Evans, Barbara Ball, Jennifer Smith, Paula Cox, Pamela Gordon), we continue to live in a sexist society, one dominated by patriarchal concepts of women and patriarchal concepts of violence (despite the incidents of matriarchal-led households, these do not generally negate the patriarchal nature of our society).

Patriarchal concepts of violence are based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force. This force is not limited to the physical; it can be economic, it can be psychological-emotional, it can be social pressures to conform, verbal in the way men may dominate discussion, or even spatial in the way men display their maleness in space.

Patriarchal violence is not limited solely to violence against women by men; it can also be male against male, adult to child or even female to male. Violence is not the preserve of males alone, although it is central to the maintenance of a sexist, patriarchal society.

It is no accident that in the recent spate of gun crimes the perpetrators and victims have been overwhelmingly male.

The gun violence does not occur in a genderless vacuum (or a racial and class one at that), and in many ways speaks to a form of masculinity that represents, in crude terms, the raw nature of patriarchy.

The cult of ‘respect’, of the ‘tough man’, of violence as a way of expressing ones masculinity, of owning women’s bodies and ‘defending’ them from the ‘other.’ While in many ways cliché, the gun, and the cult around it, can be seen as a phallic symbol – as a representation of masculinity (it is no accident that pro-gun lobbies in the USA complain that attempts for gun control are ‘emasculating’).

Ending Violence

Ending violence against women must move beyond simply raising awareness of physical and/or sexual assault against women in our society, as important as this is in itself.

Ending violence against women must look at violence in the wider sense of patriarchal violence and society as a sexist, patriarchal society, where women are systematically disadvantaged compared to men, where all men benefit from male privilege, and where patriarchal concepts of violence have now manifested itself in gun crimes.

To truly end violence against women we must, as a society, engage in a national discussion about what is violence, and how the sexist, patriarchal nature of our society reproduces itself in our families, in our schools, in our places of worship, in our media, in our stores and in the State.

It requires reflection on what masculinity is, or what it could be.

It requires a commitment from our males to acknowledge how the patriarchal nature of our society, while benefitting them with male privilege, also limits their development as full human beings and serves as an obstacle to forming deeper relationships with others, male or female.

The patriarchal nature of our society commits violence not just against the females of our society, but also against the weak (children) and fuels the self-destruction of us all, most explicitly in gun violence, but also in the ecological destruction that our way of life involves.

Violence against women in our society extends beyond the glass ceiling and into an invisible labyrinth that affects every aspect of our society. Gender equality in wages, in work opportunities, in representation (be it corporate, union, party, boards or parliament) and house-work, these are all things we should be fighting for.

But we must also go further and question the very nature of our patriarchal society itself.

- Mr Starling has degrees in Ecological Economics and Urban and Regional Planning, and is well known in the online community through his Catch-A-Fire blog, which he has maintained since 2007. He ran as Independent candidate in C#20 Pembroke South West in the 2012 General Election.

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