International Woman’s Day and Mother’s Day

This week we have been celebrating both International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day, which I feel are very similar. Last year I had the opportunity to run the assemblies promoting International Women’s Day at school, which I started with “Yes there is an International Men’s Day”. I tried to portray how there is so much to celebrate in our history that can be attributed to women. From Ada Lovelace who was the mother of computer programming to Florence Nightingale who revolutionised nursing with the use of pie charts. I also told the story of the statues in Central Park. Up until 2020ish all the statues in Central Park where of distinguished men, the only statues of females were of fictional characters. A statue of women’s rights pioneers, Sojourner Truth, Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was finally unveiled during COVID. What was most astounding of this event was the backlash and opposition to erecting a new statue. It was quite unbelievable. I suppose the question I have is would there have been such argument if it had been a statue of a male historic figure. 

I believe there is a link between International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day, many of our most amazing women in history were also mothers. In fact, many of the most amazing men in history had the benefit of amazing mothers. Mothers are the glue that hold our families together, they are the glue that hold society together and are the ones that encourage, nag, influence and love us. The reason that some of the women became inspirational was due to their inspirational mothers. Showing us that anything is possible. I do realise that this is not always the case, and that people have done amazing things without having the support of their mothers or having their mother around. But as I read the posts on facebook it is evident that many of our mothers have been the support we needed for us to become who we became. I would also like to think that us mothers are continuing this tradition. Supporting our children, inspiring them to be the best they can be.

However, I noticed a worrying trend on some of the social media that I saw. Many of the posts celebrating International Women’s Day seem to be perpetuating the stereotyping of women into simply beautiful women. That the achievements of many of these women is overshadowed by how pretty they look. It is not that these women are not beautiful however surely we shouldn’t be only focusing on this. What have these women achieved that is what we should celebrating. Until women can be seen as more than just a pretty face, or ugly or thin or fat or what other physical characteristic we decided we are going to pick on then how are we going to be taken seriously for our other achievements. We are more than our physical appearance, we are more than wives, mothers and daughters, we can be anything we set our mind on. But more than that we should celebrate each other’s achievements. We should not judge each other and we should support each other to achieve the best of ourself. Here is a picture of me finishing my 10K race yesterday, I look like I am about to burst into tears and it is not pretty, but it shows determination to finish the race despite it being hard. That is what we should celebrate being amazing despite the struggle.