August is the month were we get together and celebrate women, all that we have done and all that we have achieved.
Allow me to be a little negative for a while, I do not understand why we need to allocate days or months towards anything. The calendar is filled with days of which society dictates today we celebrate love, and today we celebrate moms and today we celebrate dads and this month is womens month so we celebrate been a women?
Why do we have to be told or reminded? The days have become so commercialized that they have completely lost their meaning. Granted women have fought and have grown and have achieved liberation, but do we only remember them one day of the year.
How many of you reading this actually take time on Women’s Day to recall any person that may have fought during the struggle? With all honesty, I am too busy with my family, either shopping or doing something that I never get to do. Its just another public holiday. Do not get me wrong, I am by no means saying that I am a spoilt, ungrateful little shit.
I totally understand that the freedom I enjoy today is because of the tears that were shed in the past, it is because this earth bore women who believed in equality, who believed that women of all colour should enjoy equal rights and that we are more than capable to be working persons who can contribute to the economy. I do believe with all my heart that part of what I have achieved today is because of all the sacrifices the women before me have had to endure.
What I do not believe, is that these women should only be remembered one day of the year, or one month. Their legacy should live on everyday, and every women who opens her eyes each morning, should do so with the drive and determination to make these women proud.
The struggle saw women standing together and fighting, however today it is very seldom that women stand and fight for each other. In fact, they fight one another. With all due respect to the people that lived and died for our freedom, what did they fight for?
Today, women are their own worst enemy. Instead of a united front, a sisterhood, they break the chains that connect us to each other.
If this is what we have become, why do we celebrate ourselves? There is nothing to be proud of? We are a disgrace.
Last year I got to attend a few womens breakfasts and lunches during the month of August, and I could not help but to notice how fake we have become. Why do we feel the need to pretend to allow each other in our spaces? With all our accomplishments did we not grow the “balls” to just stay away from people we do not have anything in common with, it would be a lot more respectful, than to pretend, don’t you think?
Going back to these events, which in an ideal world would have been planned to network amongst each other, share ideas and help one another. If I had put a room full of our male counter parts together, there would be exchanges of business cards, ideas shared, partnerships formed and on occasions friendships created. Hmmm….. very different to a womens’ get together, that’s for sure. There would definitely be more head to toe check outs, whispering amongst the clicks, and a lot of gossiping disguised with a beautiful smile and a sun shining “hello”.
The celebration of womanhood, should be so much more. I am not writing this to put women down, I am writing this with the hope that we would open our eyes and see what possibilities lie ahead of us. We are a sisterhood, we have the potential to achieve so much more if we can just learn from the women that came before us.
Women of the world, stand tall and stand together. We are not emenies to each other , we are the pillars of strength that each of you can rest upon. Can you imagine what we can achieve in numbers?
Woman of the world, you were put on earth as mothers, you were blessed with the nurturing trait. I ask and pray that as we move forward this month and remember the greatness of women, that we open our hearts to our sisters, nurture each other, teach each other and grow. And lets hope that the generation that is born after us remembers us as the generation that healed the divisions amongst us and tightened the chains that unite us.
Happy Women’s Month, and here’s looking forward to a new generation of sisterhood.
Maria Isabella Valaskatzis
