IWD 2021 - what can we hope for this year?

[Liquorishtoffee]

Last year I got pretty hacked off as the focus was moved, and since then we’ve seen the stonewall recommendations for using says such as this (IWD was name checked) to gain brownie points...

Can we hope for a better IWD this year?

I have very low expectations to be honest. Let's hope I'm surprised.

Yep my expectations are very low. I think we should keep a list of all the IWD events that include TW and all the orgs who centre TW in their activities for the day.

I find the IWD website so uninspiring. It just seems to be about a new pose each year for an Instagram hashtag and that's it.

God - when they best you can hope for is for the police, council offices, MI6, Bank of England and various woman’s magazines, healthcare products companies and media outlets to just ignore it...

Pretty sure it's going to be a total wash out again. The theme for this year is "challenging gender stereotypes" which is all well and good except it's already being morphed into not actually being about women at all. I've been invited to speak on a panel and was just sent the notes. The whole thing is about how gender stereotypes affect men and women ("boys have a lower reading age than girls" etc). One of the other panellists is a gay male talking about how stereotypes affect the LGBTQ community.

Can women not just have one day to talk about issues affecting women? Of course lesbians don't exist anymore (apparently) so we couldn't possibly have a female person talking about the awful stereotyping and erasure of lesbian women. Sigh.

“Challenging gender stereotypes”? Oh lord it’s going to be wall to wall TW isn’t it because let’s not delude ourselves that anywhere is going to have TM front & centre!

I’m going to take as advantage of the day and discuss the joys of heavy periods, pregnancy issues (piles, stretch marks, sore boobs...), varicose veins (mostly a woman’s thing) and hysterectomies.

Actually I may have got the theme wrong there. I just checked on the site and it says "Choose to challenge" which could mean pretty much anything. However, from what I've seen so far it does seem to be being interpreted by most people as "challenge gender stereotyping".

I’m going to take as advantage of the day and discuss the joys of heavy periods, pregnancy issues (piles, stretch marks, sore boobs...), varicose veins (mostly a woman’s thing) and hysterectomies.

Funnily enough the big corporates don't seem to be going with the varicose veins and hysterectomies angle!

And of course we'll just have to gloss over the issues of sexual violence, domestic violence, FGM, prostitution and repeals to abortion laws for another year. Let's also forget about the massive reversal of women's rights we've seen over the last 12 months due to the pandemic. We wouldn't want to put a downer on the day when we could all just be Instagram-ing selfies in rainbow t-shirts.

I am fully expecting to be more "challenged" than inspired come the end of March 8th.

Incidentally, last November, how many International Men's Day events even mentioned transmen, let alone centred them? I remember a truly shocking picture of (I think?!) collated tweets on here from last March where dozens of organisations and prominent people were using IWD as a platform to promote "transwomen are women".

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

It's become rather like Black Friday in the UK. Despite frantic publicity it isn't really a thing with any meaning and is largely all about the advertising, and it's much better to ignore it and wait until it goes away.

I expect someone will ask 'Is there an International Men's Day?' to be provocative, and then you can all put them down by telling them there is.

Who’s the (male) comedian who runs a twitter thread every year answering such daft questions, raising money for a woman’s charity?

@Liquorishtoffee

Who’s the (male) comedian who runs a twitter thread every year answering such daft questions, raising money for a woman’s charity?

Richard Herring

I think this was pointed out last year, but if not please take note and please pass on to anyone who is interested.

The web site called international women's day has nothing to do with women's groups, or politics or anything. It was set up as a money spinning exercise.

And the saddest part about it is the number of councils and other official bodies who have just let themselves be coopted.

So please dont quote them or what they say is this years theme.

Is it about as relevant as letting Kellogs tell us what to think.

And most of the listings are business orinetated anyway.

If you want an "offcial " theme then google UN Women.

But in the end IWD is only what women make it.

So if there is nothing gender critical that's because GC women haven't organised anything.

So the only ones letting ourselves down are ourselves.

In fact this year, as everything will be virtual is should be easier than ever for women to have online events whether through facebook, zoom, or something else.

Please keep an eye out and see if your local refuge or rape crisis is having a fund raising drive. If nothing else helping them would be better than nothing.

But in the end IWD is only what women make it.
So if there is nothing gender critical that's because GC women haven't organised anything.

That’s a fair comment really!

I can’t see much planned for IWD.... but all organisations are volunteer led and we’re in the midst of a national and global crisis putting immense pressure on women.

FiLiA is on in October!!!

WoW has a whole online thing going on, they are not generally friendly to the gender critical viewpoint though. There’s a Kimberlé Crenshaw event that I was thinking of watching, you can send questions in too.

Not un-women! They are contemptible.

In Ireland they'll be wheeling out a whole lotta blokes just like last year.

re UN women that's why I put "official" in quotes.

There's the difference between the original IWD linked to working women's rights, and the UN creating an "official" day.

And back in the 70s there were big fights each year about having the IWD march in London women only. (At one meeting a TU man said "Dont think of me as a man, think of me as a trade unionists.) And if fact it was the TU who kept it going as an idea until WLM in the 70s when women claimed it for their own.

In a way it is a shame that MWR is in March rather than during the 16 days of activism later in the year. It would be great (post Covid) to have a really big women's march with representation of all the issues that women are facing.

Yes @stumbledin it would be amazing to have march for women/women's rights/issues etc. I have never been to such a thing but would love to this year. What sort of groups attend/organise these types of march? We really need some huge movement, much bigger than me too. Women's lives matter! Famous people making public displays to support women and to highlight the shocking murder rates of women in the UK (and the rest of the world!) like BLM

Well there's nothing to stop us organising far more interesting threads here on IWD.

Scummy0mummy - sorry to say this was back in the late 70s early 80s when there was a large number of women's groups. Sometimes there were difficulties getting someone to do the actual organising, but different groups would turn up with their own placards or banners. Usually the only scuffle was to make sure Wages for Housework didn't get to the head of the march!

But it was never ever about well known people.

The whole point was to have a very visual representation of the range and number of women's active groups.

I remember one year as we turned into Picadilly a lot of women in the different shops all leaning out of upstairs windows cheering us on!

And because one year a break away group had stormed into Mothercare (cant quite remember why) the next year there was a line up of police protecting the store!

So in the year of online activities what would be great is if during the day women's activists groups from around the UK took it in turns to talk about what they had been doing and were hoping to do.

The point being to make visible that women are still active and organising for themselves and other women!

This is a poster from 1975 for a march in east London.

As you can see the image they created then is still being (re)used now 46 years later!

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Women%E2%80%99s_Day_March_%281975%29.jpg/220px-Women%E2%80%99s_Day_March_%281975%29.jpg

MichelleofzeResistance - Yes! a mumsnet IWD event ... anyone got any ideas?

Day of Rage. Niceness will not be permitted...