Happy (?) International Women's Day

(in honour of Shaykhsperea who asked for this post!)

Happy International Women’s day, everyone! I know, it’s one day late (March Eight) but being recently single again (yes, I am once again accepting full frontal nudity pictures) I’m hoping you’ll forgive the omission :)

So I had the purple ribbon all day around my arm. I ate purple-wrapped Hershey Kisses (btw, the dark chocolate ones are the best. The milk chocolate ones taste like glue.). We.. celebrated.

Or did we?

I mean, that’s it?? I just learned earlier today that International Women’s Day is a national holiday in Kazakhstan, and the ladies receive flowers and gifts. (guys, don’t freak out. They don’t celebrate Valentine’s so it’s not like you’ll have to do the whole thing twice within a month).

But what’s the idea of celebrating for one day? Women remain the largest oppressed minority (well, majority actually, we’re talking 51%+) of the globe.

(no, I’m not trying to score feminist points here. This is serious. Hear me out).

Well, we do have the The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which has 185 signatories (and, ehemm, the US of A is the only country that has signed but not ratified! For shame!!).

But the fact remains that women are still subject to abject discrimination.

Women are still being beaten, being sold, being assaulted as a tool of war. They are subject to legal discrimination because of their gender. Check out Human Rights Watch for more.

Not sure if all this is worth celebrating.

But if you still think it is, well, happy women’s day. Oh wait, that was yesterday. We can go back to our discrimination now.

It’ll take so much more than just a day and a purple ribbon to fix it all. So we’d better get started.