Women’s Day 2024: Patriarchy with Lipstick?
Addressing Continuing Oppression of Women in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Beyond
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"Muster the troops line up the ranks
A woman’s going to send the tanks
And all of us will give her thanks
Especially weapons manufacturers, banks
And thanks to those suburban moms
A woman’s going to send the bombs
I’m glad a woman is so strong
To send our countries all those bombs."
- El Jones, from the poem A Woman’s Going to Send the Drones” [1]
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International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, originated as a concept in the early twentieth century. It was spurred on by socialist women in the United States and Europe aiming mostly on addressing labour rights and women’s suffrage. [2]
Today, as with most other major holidays, the radical edge of Women’s Day has been blunted and largely swept aside in favour of general and vague notions of equality. And it has been heavily commercialized. Even the website internationalwomensday.com is managed by the British marketing firm Aurora Ventures. [3][4]
In Canada, our proud, progressive Prime Minister has sung the praises of women’s liberation practically from Day 1. When asked within days of his first election by a reporter why it was so important to have a gender-balanced Cabinet, he replied, “Because it’s 2015!” [5]
By March 8, 2023, he even had Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defence and a Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister as women. But does any of this female involvement affecting the wide range of foreign and military policy? [6]
Judging by the apparent shift away from diplomacy and towards more war-making with Russia, the trends do not reveal an obvious tendency toward “sugar and spice and everything nice.” Why does the 70 percent of Palestinian deaths in Gaza since October 7 of last year being women and children not seem to affect Canada’s attitude toward continuing to arm a plausibly genocidal Israel?
This week, we plan to have a broad take on the illusion versus the reality of female empowerment in Canada and abroad with three outstanding and thoughtful speakers.
In our first half hour, we speak with Tamara Lorincz, an academic and peace activist in Canada to talk about how far short the Trudeau government has fallen from embracing a true feminist foreign policy, and also speaks about upcoming actions communities could explore to correct affairs.
Later, we talk to Sonali Kolhatkar, a journalist and co-founder of the Afghan Womens Mission in the US to talk about the incorrect assumptions some people have about America as “protecting women’s rights” in the territory they invaded more than 20 years ago.
Finally, independent researcher Tina Renier spends some time talking about the failure of female equity in liberated Black countries in the Global South and alternative methods to empowerment.
Tamara Lorincz is a member of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, a PhD candidate, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, and a fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute .
Sonali Kolhatlar is a Journalist, activist, and artist, and the founder, host, and executive producer of Pacifica’s popular weekly program Rising Up With Sonali which airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica radio stations. She is also the founding Co-Director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a US-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the work of RAWA.
Tina Renier is an independent researcher based in Jamaica. She is a regular contributor to Global Research. Her areas of research interests are international development, with special emphasis on labour and development, education and development and women, gender and development.
(Global Research News Hour Episode 423)
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Notes:
- https://nsadvocate.org/2020/11/21/a-womans-going-to-send-the-drones-a-poem-by-el-jones/
- “International Women’s Day History | International Women’s Day | The University of Chicago”; https://web.archive.org/web/20170408081654/https://iwd.uchicago.edu/page/international-womens-day-history#1909%20The%20First%20National%20Woman’s%20Day%20in%20the%20US
- Annika Blau (Mar 7, 2019),’International Women’s Day went from bloody revolution to corporate breakfasts’, ABC News; https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-08/international-womens-day-from-revolution-to-breakfast-cupcakes/10879932?section=politics
- https://www.aurora-ventures.com/Work
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8OOIU7xQrk
- https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/warmaking-is-canadas-feminist-foreign-policy
