Good afternoon. It’s an award and a pleasance to be invited to talk to you today. International Women’s Day is many things – a cause for jubilation. a ground to hesitate and re-evaluate. a recollection. an inspiration. a clip to honour loved and admired 1s and in several states – including China. Armenia. Russia. Azerbaijan. Belarus. Bulgaria. Kazakhstan. Macedonia. Madagascar. Mongolia. Tajikistan. Ukraine. Uzbekistan and Vietnam. but clearly non India! – a public holiday1. So I’d like to widen. first of all. a note of thanks to all of you for taking clip out of your work agendas to come here. every bit good as to ask foring me to talk. On this twenty-four hours. all over the universe. we consider both the stairss frontward toward better lives for adult females that have been taken in recent times. every bit good as the advancement still required. Necessarily. we name our enemies: patriarchal constructions. possibly. or more specifically. legislative and political determinations. corporate entities. condemnable threats. culture-based ignorance and economic disenfranchisement. They are all important things. and I am non proposing that they are non. But I have felt for a long clip N
ow that something else is at the bosom of female disempowerment. Something that isn’t as easy to deconstruct or level. Something that is hard to even call. and at times feels confusingly counter-intuitive. What. to me. is at the bosom of female disempowerment is the deeply painful fact of how adult females can be each others’ worst enemies. One of the most celebrated things that former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has gone on record to state is “I think there is a particular topographic point in snake pit for adult females who don’t assist other adult females. ”2 A particular topographic point in snake pit – can you conceive of what torture that would be. and how profoundly wounded a individual has to experience to reprobate person that manner? When you think of what she said. that such a particular topographic point is reserved for adult females who don’t assist other adult females – what associations come to mind? I don’t know about you. but my bosom burns to retrieve the countless times I have been betrayed and even sabotaged by adult females I loved or looked up to – instructors. relations. equals. friends and co-workers. Haven’t work forces done the same? Of class they have – but someway. it stings worse coming from another adult female. because of how deeply counter-intuitive it feels. This is the kind of pyrosis that makes me believe. yes. Albright was right – there is a topographic point in snake pit for adult females who don’t aid – who hurt – other adult females.
There has to be. Even if there is no Hell – how could at that place non be such a topographic point? How could such perfidy be left without requital? There are large ways and small ways to this perfidy. The small ways I barely need to recite. because the best illustrations of these are empirical 1s. and you know them in your ain life. The large ways tend to be a affair of collusion: for case. it may hold been work forces who created archaic and inhibitory societal codifications. but is it non adult females who pass them on. who guarantee that their households map within and go on to transport frontward the same logic? To take to non interrupt a concatenation is to take to propagate it. We can get down by taking a expression at the really fact of us all being in this room today. How did we acquire here? Each of us have overcome troubles in our ain lives. each of us has dared to woolgather. and fortuitously. has been born in a clip where we were able to prosecute some if non all of these dreams. We have had entree to resources and options which were denied to adult females of merely a few coevalss ago – resources and options which are even denied to other adult females today. in this state and elsewhere. Some of us have endured bad fortune. made bad determinations. or failed at things we tried our custodies at – but we haven’t been ruined by these bad lucks. We have options. We have 2nd. 3rd and ninety-third opportunities. We have more liberty than our foremothers may hold been able to conceive of. In short. we are all so lucky.
And this is merely because of the courageous adult females and work forces who fought for certain rights and equality. who went against the tide of what was acceptable. who challenged the position quo. who refused to take as an reply that “that’s merely how things are” . We are here because they did non believe of themselves entirely. They did non pass on their abilities to merely procuring a better life for themselves. but put the vision of a better universe above their ain personal journeys. and in making so secured a better life for 1000000s. I am inquiring you today if we excessively can demand a better account than “that’s merely how things are” . I believe that as adult females. we are conditioned on a deeply embedded degree to be wary of or threatened by. and accordingly barbarous toward. one another. Possibly there are biological or evolutionary grounds for this. But I refuse to accept that we can non germinate female competition out of our systems.
Larger systems of power. yes. but more significantly. smaller microcosms of the same. In our ain lives. can we acquire over our misgiving of other adult females? Can we go forth coteries and cabals behind in our school old ages and embrace a greater trueness? Can we see that another woman’s success need non needfully intend our ain failure? Can we discontinue to be judgmental or covetous? Can we discontinue to be threatened by other adult females. for grounds of our ain insecurities. and can we halt moving out of that sense of fright? Merely as our pallet of large life picks continues to spread out the more society develops. I would wish to believe that in our twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours interactions. we should besides go more aware of how we choose to handle one another. Can we do picks that deprogramme the manner we have learnt to experience about other adult females – learnt from all the ways we ourselves have been hurt – and choose to state. “This Michigan with me. What has been done to me by misss I went to school with. adult females in my drawn-out household. higher-ups I worked under or any other state of affairs. incident or environment that fostered in me a sense of female competition or misgiving will no longer command the manner in which I respond to persons now. ” Will we choose to sabotage other adult females. in ways large and little. or will we take to encompass a less misanthropic position? Can we work together to make new environments in which all of us can experience free to run into our highest potency without being hindered by unhealthy competition? You may be inquiring why I have taken a less gay attack to International Women’s Day and am inquiring these potentially uncomfortable inquiries.
I promise you I didn’t get down out this misanthropic. In fact. I started out rather the opposite – if I could hold had feminist mottos on my nappies. I would hold! Throughout my teenage old ages I volunteered with women’s NGOs. and go on to make so in some capacity today. I was one of those misss who would instead hold a tee-shirt that said “the revolution is my boyfriend” than have an existent homo one. I think I limited my ain literary raids for some old ages by declining to read anything by writers I derogatorily labeled “dead white men” . I was proudly. radically. evidently and – I must acknowledge. possibly a small offensively – women’s rightist. And so the disenchantment set in. At some point in my life as a immature militant. I began to see that polemics and political relations merely go so far. How far does philosophy interpret accurately into one’s practical worlds? One’s cardinal humanity and compassion are all that truly matter – it is of no effect if this can be backed up by proselytising or theory.
You know how this works. I am about certain that there is no 1 here today who would non call her grandma. female parent. aunt or sister as her personal inspiration – a adult female who did non needfully cognize of or state that she subscribed to theoretical ideals but however manifested the best of them in her life and across the lives of all she touched. Today my feminism is nuanced by the apprehension that as with all great antagonists. the most important challenge to female authorization comes from within. From within our ranks. from within our ain Black Marias. from within our ain inability to look beyond a reactionist and defensive stance. But there is something else that besides comes from within. And that is strength. Womans have ever regarded as being strong. and we are. but in modern times we are besides powerful. I think of power as arising from an external beginning. from the proof of being in a certain place of influence. But strength has a far more esoteric beginning. It manipulates less. and moves more.
There is a difference between strength and power – which do you run from? And I ask these uncomfortable inquiries non because I am above reproach but because I besides deal with them in my twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours life and work. Sometimes. I frown on the actions of teenage misss because they do non look every bit sceptered as I was at their age. Or I might in secret judge person of my coevals for holding had an arranged matrimony. allowing her in-laws dictate her calling picks. or non recognizing how beautiful she is because Television commercials tell her otherwise. But who am I. truly. to judge? How would I cognize what those misss or adult females have been through and what has shaped their determinations? Why can’t I merely respect that they are different. but no less equal? Concurrently. I struggle to undo and unlearn injury imprinted on me because I am a certain sort of adult female. born into a certain sort of civilization. in a certain epoch. I struggle to non be manipulated into being pitted against other adult females in societal and professional state of affairss by those who know merely how to force those buttons. I struggle to cover gracefully with female associates who have backstabbed. cheated and even plagiarized me without holding to fall to petty struggle that would merely fulfill those who believe that adult females can non germinate out of our habituated hostility.
Because I believe we can. As we celebrate International Women’s Day this twelvemonth ( and observe it we should! ) let us besides bear in head that the battle is far from over. Women’s authorization should ne’er be reduced to single success narratives. It should be about corporate wellbeing. Equally long as adult females continue to run from that deeply embedded topographic point of intuition and bitterness. we will ne’er be free. No affair what stuff. societal or rational highs we scale. we will ne’er be free unless we learn a new paradigm with which to see other adult females. With which to see ourselves. There are two ways to illume a
2nd lamp: you can make so by snuffing out the first as you ignite the 2nd. or you can let the fire of one wick to touch another. and animate its ain fire. You are a aglow being. Be unafraid in this cognition. Let your light illuminate as many lives as possible. It will non decrease your ain. I would wish to stop this talk with a quotation mark from an anon. beginning that I came across on the cyberspace. I find it soothing – and I hope that you excessively will be inspired by it. “Blessed are the adult females. who have grown beyond their greed. and put an terminal to their hatred. They delight in the beauty of the manner things are. and maintain their Black Marias open. twenty-four hours and dark. They are like beautiful trees planted on the Bankss of fluxing rivers. which bear fruit when they are ready. Their foliages will non fall or wither. and everything they do will win. ”3 Thank you.
