Am I the only one wondering how long it’ll be before the organisers of International Women’s Day are forced to rename their campaign? How, depending on what they mean by ‘women’, it’ll need to be called ‘International People-with-a-cervix Day’ or ‘International People-who-identify-as-a-woman Day?’
Quite what the founders – a group of American workers who back in 1909 demanded shorter hours, better pay and voting rights – would make of the word ‘woman’ being gradually pushed out of the lexicon as a meaningful term we will never know. But on a better note, they would surely be overawed by the progress made in the past 113 years. Women account for over half of all workers employed in management, professional and related occupations in the US, for instance. Here in Britain, the female employment rate has risen 20 percentage points in half a century.
The plight of disenfranchised women across the globe undoubtedly warrants our attention, but deserves more than 24 hours of it.
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