Silent no more — raise awareness every day
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” — Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One's Own”
I've thought a lot about the women who have gone before me, blazing trails and smashing ceilings as they went, but I confess I have not thought a lot about the origins of International Women's Day, until now.
The very first International Women's Day was marked on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany, with over a million women and men coming out in support of women's rights to vote, work, hold public office and not be discriminated against.
Just six days after those rallies were held, a horrifying fire broke out in the garment district of New York City, killing more than 140 women. Known as the “Triangle Fire” for the Triangle Shirtwaist factory where it occurred, it was one of the worst workplace disasters in United States history, and shone a harsh light on unsafe labour conditions.
Most of the factory workers were young, immigrant women, toiling away nearly shoulder to shoulder for less than a dollar a day in cramped confines for 11 or 12 hours at a stretch, with few breaks or benefits.
We can only imagine what they felt about their new life in America — the promise of freedom and dream of eventual prosperity versus the real hardships of poverty, language barriers, days of endless toil and the stress of uncertainty.
Those 140 did not live to tell their stories or demand a safer workplace.
Women have made great strides in various professions and positions of power since then, though perhaps not as much has changed as our daughters deserve.
Recently, I watched the series “Room 2806: The Accusation” on Netflix, which documents the charges faced by then-international Monetary Fund head and French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-kahn. He was accused of sexually assaulting Guinean immigrant and chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo, 32, in a luxury hotel — her workplace.
The charges were eventually dropped, although Diallo won a civil suit against Strausskahn and received a financial settlement.
One of the most powerful moments in the series had nothing to do with Strausskahn and his movements among global financial brokers and the political elite. Rather, it was the crowd of female hotel workers, in blue and grey uniforms, who turned out in the streets of New York City to support Diallo on the day of Strauss-kahn's court appearance. Black women. Brown women. Many of them immigrants.
Suzanne Moore, writing for the U.K. Daily Mail, documented the scene:
“The ‘Maids' Rally' — as it has been patronisingly called — showed us the faces of those who move silently into our rooms and change our sheets. We may travel the world over and never have a conversation with such people.
“Here they were: mostly women of colour, many immigrants with basic English, out to show support for a woman they had never met.
“A local branch of the New York Hotel Trades Council — the hotel workers' union — organised this protest, and it was a stroke of genius to get these women to wear their uniforms.
“Somehow, a symbol of servitude became a show of strength.”
That was June 2011, 100 years after the Triangle Fire.
Like the women and girls who perished a century before, these women work behind the scenes, often unsung and unnoticed. But on this day, they came together to support Nafissatou Diallo, to raise their voices and lift each other up, decrying working conditions that they say routinely involve verbal abuse and sexual harassment.
They cast off their silence and anonymity in a show of solidarity.
It's important we use our voices every day, to advocate for the dignity and rights of women and girls everywhere, and to celebrate their strengths and achievements.
Let's choose to challenge the status quo.