Women’s day
AS SOUTH Africa commemorates Women’s Day, it is again important to reflect on the meaning of the day. This requires we take note of the events that led to the day becoming what it is on the political and public calendar and the contemporary gender scene.
The women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956 did so not only because they did not want to be subjected to carrying an identity book with them at every moment of their lives. They wanted to be treated with human dignity and refused to allow the state to dehumanise them.
They were united and understood that though the carrying of passbooks was not going to affect them all, regardless of their race, no person could live their best life in an unjust society.
And so it is again in 2016. Great advances have been made since the march. We have progressive laws and policies aimed at fighting against sexism in all forms. For that reason, Women’s Day is a day to be celebrated.
Unfortunately their story does not end there. Sexism is with us even if it has been expunged from the law books.
The glass ceiling remains firmly in place in the workplace and social groups. Women cannot walk freely without their bodies being objectified or even injured and their spirits molested in many public spaces.
It was to be expected that it would not be easy ridding society of the prejudice against women and violence against female bodies it had acquired over centuries and institutionalised into laws.
Women’s Day must therefore be a moment of reflection for all of us.
We must ask ourselves how we aid and abet the monster that is anti-women sexism.
This could be in the innocent way we raise boys and girls and expectations on teens that are based on the sex of the youngster to us holding sincere but ultimately backward thoughts about roles and capacities of men and women in society.
So whether you celebrate or commemorate Women’s Day, let it be the day that as individuals, we pay attention to and recommit ourselves in the struggle for gender justice because that was what August 9, 1956 was about.