Today is International Women’s Day.

I wonder about the point of that, sometimes. While yes, it’s all fine and good to have a special day to celebrate women and champion the causes that we still have to work on, the women who most need the attention, the equality, the changes, likely have no idea that there even is an International Women’s Day. Does a mother in Haiti really care about a stupid holiday right now? How about a woman in Afghanistan?

Not surprisingly, the UN, which created Internal Women’s Day, has very little to say on the subject, and makes it difficult to find any information. You’d think they’d have a link on their index page today or something. Regardless, it appears that the theme for today internationally is “Women and HIV/AIDS “. (On a side note, Canada’s theme is “She’s on a role” recognition for women who help a lot and go unrecognized or some such thing. Why do we need a separate theme? Are there no women with HIV/AIDS in Canada?) As such, it appears the UN is dedicating a whole 2 hours to a “panel discussion” of the theme. Wow. That’s…underwhelming. Ok, I know the UN has a lot going on, but seriously? Why even bother? Will decisions and actions take place as a result of this panel discussion?

I realize that unless I’m out there trying to do something for women’s rights directly I should probably shut up and stop being such a hypocrite. However, I’m not the one who declared a day in honour of women’s rights, I never purported to be trying to do great things. Maybe I will. Maybe I need to look at things on a more local scale.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2004 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.