A late entrant for most uncomfortable attempt to use IWD for unrelated political point-scoring comes from the US House Ways and Means committee, where representatives are debating the proposed changes to healthcare provisions.
Missouri’s Republican congressman, Jason Smith, is concerned that women are – under Obamacare – paying tax on their visits to tanning salons. Why is nobody talking about this on International Women’s Day, he wanted to know. (I’m not sure he genuinely wanted to know, but he did say it.)
GOP rep goes on long riff on how tanning tax hurts women. "Today is International Women's Day. It's interesting no one is bringing it up." pic.twitter.com/FdOGOo18Om
Washington Democrat congresswoman Suzan DelBene thought women might have more pressing concerns when it came to healthcare: birth control, for one.
Tanning beds,@RepJasonSmith? Really? Your biggest concern for women's health is paying too much for tanning? How about real healthcare? pic.twitter.com/1Di6Kdgl7u
Ahead of International Women’s Day, we asked readers to share stories about the battles you’ve won.
You can read them all here, and here is just one example of the responses we received:
Brenda Carter, El Cerrito, California
In 1969, I was a college student and part of a hippy-communist collective. We put out a monthly newspaper and ran a bookstore in deepest, darkest conservative Orange County. We all worked together, but there were plenty of gender assumptions at play. I refused to learn to make coffee or type so that I couldn’t be stuck with those mundane tasks. The women in the group met in a consciousness-raising group. One question we asked ourselves was why it was always the men leading chants and making speeches at rallies and demonstrations. We decided it wasn’t that they were unwilling to share, it was that we lacked confidence.
So one night, we borrowed a bullhorn [megaphone] and headed down to the beach. We took turns getting a feel for the mechanics, and then we began using the bullhorn to amplify our voices, most of us for the first time ever. The noise of the waves gave us the perfect cover to experiment and let loose. I remember the freedom of standing out on the sand under the dark sky, finding my loudest voice, and letting it fly. I had never been in a situation before where I felt so free to fail and so free to succeed, and that night made me a different kind of woman.
After that, the bullhorn was ours. A small battle, perhaps, but one that has come to mind in recent months as I’ve watched so many women speaking from bullhorns and microphones. Who even thinks to notice it now? On such small battles, larger ones are won, and new worlds open up.
The Empire State building has been lit up in pink to mark the close of IWD on the US east coast. (The women’s march has done a pretty solid job of reclaiming pink as a protest colour.)
To mark International Women’s Day in Brazil, football team Cruzeiro tonight wore specially commissioned squad numbers with messages to highlight daily challenges faced by women in the South American country.
Cruizero won their Brazilian Cup match against Murici-AL 2-0.
The shirts featured a different message for each number such as “a rape every 11 minutes” or “salaries 30% lower”, organised in conjunction with the NGO AzMina, which fights for female empowerment in Brazil.
Announcing the initiative on their website on Wednesday, the Belo Horizonte-based club’s president Gilvan de Pinho Tavares said:
In the 21st century, it is not tolerable to see women suffer acts of violence and discrimination.
With this action, we join all who combat inequalities against people of the feminine sex. This is one of the social roles that big fan clubs must always be developing.
International Women’s Day is not just a moment to bring to the surface all the characteristics of inequality that still exist in Brazil and the world, but it is also a moment of awareness of other aspects related to women. It’s important to have a moment of this, where you can bring up such important and women-related issues.
Reuters has spoken to some of the women who took part in protests in the US today:
Debra Sands, a middle-school teacher, joined thousands of women at New York City’s Central Park after her students convinced her to attend.
“This past year’s election made me realize that voting in November isn’t enough,” Sands said.
In San Francisco, where about 1,500 people gathered, Christine Bussenius said she and her female colleagues at Grey Advertising convinced their all-male managers to give them the day off and participate in the rally.
“We were nervous,” she admitted. “But the men stepped up to fill in the void.”
Rallies were held in numerous cities, including Washington, where demonstrators gathered at the US labor department.
Female staffers at Fusion Media Group’s Gizmodo declared they were striking for the day.
At least three US school districts, in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, closed because of staff shortages after teachers requested the day off.
Nearly 1,000 women converged outside Los Angeles City Hall, many of them critical of the Republican-backed healthcare bill that would strip women’s health and abortion provider Planned Parenthood of funding.
“It’s terrifying. It’s anti-woman,” said Kassia Krozsur, a finance professional.
About 200 gathered in Atlanta, where signs read “We are sisters” and “Stop Trump.”
“If we want to change what is going on, we need to turn anger into action. People need to run for local office,” organizer Rebekah Joy said.
Pakistani women take part in a demonstration to mark International Women’s Day in Islamabad. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP
Macedonia
A rally in Skopje, Macedonia. Photograph: Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Yemen
Yemeni women at a rally marking IWD outside the UN offices in Sanaa. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA
Lebanon
Women outside the government palace in Beirut hold a banner reading in Arabic: ‘We demand our rights to build Lebanon together.’ Photograph: Nabil Mounzer/EPA
Egypt
An artist performs during a demonstration against sexual harassment in Cairo. Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images
In the US, Time reports that several women’s march organisers who were arrested earlier on Wednesday in New York have now been released.
Organisers Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Bob Bland were among a number of protesters detained close to the Trump Hotel at Columbus Circle. Most – including Mallory, Sarsour and Perez – were freed on Wednesday evening, Time reported, but others remain in custody:
Yet to be released by 8pm on Wednesday was Sophie Ellman-Golan, a 24-year old activist whose mother Rabbi Barat Ellman was arrested about three weeks ago for protesting the Trump’s travel ban.
“I’m incredible proud of her,” said Ellman as she waited outside the precinct for her daughter to be released. “For a long time she’s been a woman who puts her feet where her mouth is.”
The ONE campaign, an international organization aimed at ending extreme poverty and eradicating preventable diseases, staged several hundred walk-ins around the globe earlier today to rally for women’s education. One of its largest events took place in Nigeria, in Ekiti State, with several hundred students and activists.
In the western part of the country, dozens holding signs to protest the worldwide gender disparity in education marched and blocked traffic on a 5km march starting at the University of Ibadan.
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Feminists across the Americas have been holding a day-long live marathon of radio programming – due to come to an end at 10pm Argentina time, in around half an hour from now.
The #MaratonaRadialFeminista has featured women and their stories from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada, Nicaragua, Mexico and Uruguay – with European solidarity from Spain and Switzerland – on Red Nosotras Radio. Organisers say:
The sorority and joy of being together, without losing our anger, will once again break the frontiers.
France’s president, François Hollande, has lambasted what he called a decline in women’s rights in the United States and Russia.
AFP reports:
Speaking on International Women’s Day, the French leader said that “threats of backtracking” on women’s rights don’t just come from “emerging nations or countries under dictatorships, but also in developed and rich countries”.
“What about positions or intentions expressed by the new US administration?” he asked.
They would “reduce funding for family planning, as if this is the first cut to be made to allow an increase in military spending”, he added.
Hollande also took aim at Moscow’s policies, pointing out that a law that penalised violence against family members had recently been modified.
“Why would anyone change this text except to once again attack the freedom of women?” he said.
Hollande, who is coming to the end of his tenure and not standing for re-election, added that in Poland there had recently been protests against attempts to impose a near total ban on abortions.
Such moves to row back on women’s rights stem from “religious fundamentalism” and “the resurgence of reactionary ideologies which intend to reassign women to the procreative role in the domestic sphere”, he said.
Women have been marching in Buenos Aires, Argentina; reader Ella Jessel, who is there, has shared this video and images with me. (You can send your own contributions, from wherever you are marking IWD, to me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.)
Last October, tens of thousands of women marched in Buenos Aires to push back against violence against women. The hashtag #NiUnaMenos (“Not one less”, meaning not one more woman lost to male violence) has become a powerful rallying cry for women in Argentina and other South American countries.
Tens of thousands of women took to the streets across Turkey earlier on Wednesday, AFP reports:
In Istanbul over 10,000 people, mostly women, walked the long Istiklal Avenue, chanting “end male-perpetrated violence” and “Tayyip, Tayyip, run, run, we are coming”.
“Tayyip” refers to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seeking to create an executive presidency that would see the post of prime minister abolished.
On 16 April, the Turkish public will vote on whether to change the current system, which the government argues causes instability – while critics claim greater powers for Erdogan will lead to one-man rule.
A deep purple dominated the colourful crowds in Istanbul who held placards saying “women are free” and “we are strong united”.
The march was organised by multiple women’s rights groups and attendees included LGBT individuals, young women, students and also men – many of whom were carrying “No” posters.
For Nurten Karanci who attended the march, being a woman in Turkey means a “fight to live, to survive”.
Last year, a woman was attacked in Istanbul for wearing shorts on a public bus while another woman wearing a headscarf said she was kicked and insulted last month.
Women’s activists often call for an end to violence against women in a country where hundreds of women are killed every year, often by their husbands.
Despite a heavy police presence and water cannon trucks on standby, the Istanbul march took place peacefully as they walked from Taksim Square to Sishane on the other end of the avenue on the European side of Istanbul.
Members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose two co-leaders remain under arrest accused of terror links, also took part of the march in Istanbul.
Marchers in central Istanbul. Photograph: Emrah Gurel/AP
Meanwhile in Ankara women hit tambourines and held “No” posters shouting their opposition to giving “one man” all the power.
In the Kurdish-majority southeastern city of Diyarbakir, hundreds of people staged a demonstration for women’s rights, dancing and playing music.
One participant, Sabiba Akgul, said all women “should stand up and support each other. Hand in hand, they will find freedom.”
Activist Ozlem Gul in Istanbul described the difficulty of being a woman in Turkey:
Being a woman anyhow is very complicated, especially today. We have to fight against many things. We have to fight against the attacks on our bodies, our work, our opinions.
We are in the streets, we won’t let up, and we will keep on the fight as Turkish women.
In Australia, the feminist and author Germaine Greer has said that aiming for equality is a “profoundly conservative goal” for women, speaking at the launch of her archive at the University of Melbourne on Wednesday night.
Greer told an audience of about 500 people at the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Theatre for the International Women’s Day event:
What everybody has accepted is the idea of equality feminism. It will change nothing. War is made against civilian populations where women and children are the principal casualties in places like Syria, whether in collapsing buildings or bombed schools.
War is now completely made by the rich with their extraordinary killing machines, killing the poor who have no comeback. Women are drawing level with men in this profoundly destructive world that we live in and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the wrong way. We’re getting nowhere.
If we’re going to change things I think we’re going to have to start creating a women’s polity that is strong, that has its own way of operating, that makes contact with women in places like Syria, and that challenges the right of destructive nations.
Women needed to aim higher and achieve more than simply drawing level with men and entering into traditionally male-dominated fields, Greer said:
If what happens when women discover when they join the army is they discover it’s no place for a sane human being then they’ve learned something.
But right now, things are looking distinctly grim.
In Brazil, a message from President Michel Temer to mark IWD has been met with some incredulity, as he praised women for their home-making skills and ability to spot a supermarket bargain:
Brazil’s president honored women by complimenting their homemaking, child-raising & home economics. I’m embarrassed to be the same gender. https://t.co/n4HqkJGM23
On Int’l Women’s Day Brazil’s President Temer says “Nobody is better than women at spotting price abnormalities in the supermarket.” Really. https://t.co/n4HqkJGM23
Temer does not have great form: on taking over as president last year, he installed a new cabinet with zero women in it. Women marching in Brazilian cities today expressed anger towards Temer, as my colleague Jonathan Watts reports:
Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasilia and Porto Alegre each saw hundreds of demonstrators mark International Women’s Day with banners and chants of Fora Temer! (Michel Temer Out!), a reference to the current president who came to power by plotting the impeachment of Brazil’s first woman president – and his former running mate – Dilma Rousseff.
The conservative president did little to mollify their anger with a speech in which he lauded how much women do around the house and the important role they play in assessing supermarket prices. He also noted that more an economic recovery will enable more women to enter the workplace in addition to their “domestic chores.”
On taking power last year, Temer abolished the ministry of women, racial equality and human rights, and cut programs on gender equality. His 28-member cabinet now includes only two women. Critics say his pension reform plans will hit women harder than men.
Hi, this is Claire Phipps picking up the live blog, with thanks to Molly.
I’ll continue to cover IWD events live as they happen, everywhere in the globe it’s still 8 March. Do send me your contributions from wherever you are, on Twitter @Claire_Phipps or in the comments below.
Here’s a female role model if ever we saw (or read) one: Matilda sees something she likes in Wall St’s Fearless Girl:
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