I've been intrigued by female colleagues grumbling about International Women's Day. One said she was always taught that if you put your mind to it, you could do anything you wanted to and that having a 'women's day' actually marginalised women. I'm sure that if you are fortunate enough to be in an environment where the hardest part of progress is making your mind up to do something, then yes, it is possible to succeed and make it happen. But if you are oppressed, marginalised, subjected to violence and control - well then the strongest mind is going to have difficulty 'getting on and succeeding'. It is certainly going to be tricky if you are one of the 62 million girls worldwide denied any form of education.
International Women's Day does more than celebrate a gender. Inequality remains rife even if the advantaged fail to recognise its existence. Statistics from the UK's Independent newspaper and elsewhere paint a grim picture that all people (not just men or women) should read, understand and take action to change.
Every job, profession or paid pursuit seems to include an automatic wage gap between men and women - with women always the lower paid. Our own profession of public relations and communication management is no exception. The CIPR is trying to address wage equality although the UK is not alone in this - it is a global problem that must be addressed across the world and across all types of work.
Here, the Executive Director of the UN Women's explains it well:
We still have much to do - gender equality is a required condition for the success of any global agenda but it won't happen without a shift in the power relations between men and women.
So celebrate International Women's Day - shout and make a noise. Don't belittle it - instead, draw attention not just to the inequalities that exist but the solutions that would see such inequalities resolved. When the clock rolls over at day's end, take what we've learnt from others and start making some changes. Then, we might just start to achieve an equal world for all.
Fighting the politics of fear
In the US, it was inevitable that Trump would win. They were never going to vote for a woman - as a country, the US is just not grown up enough to do so. Whether the US will vote for a woman in the future is yet to be seen - for now they are stuck with a trigger-happy President, seemingly more occupied with a love of personal power and showmanship than with the state of the people he governs. Just shy of the 100 day mark, I have yet to see evidence of any improvement for the people he promised to help - just a show-and-tell of signatures on executive orders that have led to immediate misery for many. I thought by now that an impeachment process might have begun - but then he let off some missiles and the fawning were awed by what they described as the ‘beauty’ of this violence.
I have to confess that as the latter half of 2016 unfolded, I found myself moving away from the keyboard, too angry, disheartened and powerless at the twists and turns of fortune that occurred throughout the world to add to the millions of words swirling through our newsfeeds.
The common thread through all the machinations - Brexit, US elections, France and now here at home - is fear. The political peddlers of fear have been ferocious in their creation of a popular sentiment that closing borders, isolating ourselves, holding others in deep suspicion and threatening others with ‘tit-for-tat’ retaliation is the only way forward. Even as deep tragedies have unfolded - from Syria to Sudan - the insidious shift towards national selfishness has left millions suffering. Dictators have risen and continue to punish, oppress and murder those who oppose them, while the rest of the world squabbles inside their borders, only looking beyond when threats or acts of terror look set to directly affect them. The peddlars have used the emotion of fear for their own purposes, which is, for the most part, to secure their power and position in the world.
So what can we do, as individuals, to change the downward spiral of circumstances with which we are faced? Perhaps the first thing is to accept that we can make a change, by speaking out, by using our precious vote, by discussing with others the various points of view and not existing in a filter bubble of our own making.
Deciding on governments, based on fearmonger policies hawked on the hustings by those anxious to retain or regain power, is not in the best interests of a population. In the UK, the shrewdly strategic Theresa May has made this snap election about Brexit but the reality is that the next elected government will enact more than a retreat from Europe. For the next five to six years, the people of the UK will have to live with whatever ‘terms and conditions’ are bundled up behind the bombast of the ‘winners’ and, as it stands, personal freedom, economic stability, heath, education and wellbeing will all suffer the consequences. Society is a contract - to quote Edmund Burke - and when we vote we are signing that contract, hopefully for better - more frequently for worse.
It is easy for politicians to latch on to one simple thread, pulling and pulling until it unravels the sensible thinking of the electorate. The common thread in Europe and beyond has been immigration, an easy wall of words to hide behind when the actual cause of the problems is governance itself and the policies being implemented over time. With every news story I am reminded of George Orwell’s 1984 - the phoney wars, the austerity, the persecution of those ready to speak out, all cloaked in a culture of amorphous threat. Edmund Burke - again - said: “"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” The need for the good to associate, to speak of tolerance and equity, has never been so great.
The tragedy of Syria began when, in 2011, people began to speak out against their President. It has become a proxy battleground for many in the period since then, but at its heart, it is still a battle for freedom and self determination. So for those, like us, going to the polls, speak out, discuss, reason with each other - don't succumb to phoney fear. Debate and look forward to what might come of a particular set of policies or a particular person in charge. Make your voice heard while you still may. The smallest whisper can make a difference.