By Cody Yorke

As we are coming up on International Women’s Day (March 8), it is a good time to reflect on the history and significance of this day and its relation to women and to feminists, as these are, after all, not always the same people.

The first International Women’s Day was in 1911, following a proposal by German socialist Clara Zetkin at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen the previous year. The day was initially proposed as one on which women in every country would press for their rights on the same day. Despite this initial association with workers’ rights and socialist politics, the meaning of International Women’s Day has morphed and expanded so that it is now hard to precisely define it. The day has been de-politicized and re-politicized countless times, and is celebrated in a huge variety of ways in different countries and contexts. It is often expanded to a week or more to accommodate all the events that take place.

What can usually be agreed on regarding International Women’s Day is that it is a day to fight for rights and a day to celebrate the economic, political, and social achievements made by women. Over the 98 years that International Women’s Day has been celebrated, the day has been used to forward calls for women’s suffrage, pay equity, women’s working conditions, peace and solidarity, women’s economic security, anti-racist feminisms, ending violence against women, and women’s access to education, and as a day to simply recognize and appreciate the women in our lives.

One important aspect of International Women’s Day is that it is just that—international. This day calls for recognition of the connections between the personal, the local, and the global in regards to women’s rights. While this can be seen as drawing on a contentious view of universal sisterhood, a sense of automatic connectedness between all women, it can also be seen as a call to critically analyze the way in which we all, not just women, affect the lives of others directly and indirectly through our actions and inactions, and the ways in which oppressions based on gender intersect with other systems of oppression.

In today’s world, when there is talk of post-feminism, as well as a considerable amount of outright anti-feminist rhetoric, it is important to be reminded of everything that has been accomplished by feminists and of what barriers still remain for women. It is equally important to look at what we mean by words like “feminist”, “post-feminist”, “women’s movement”, and even “women”. As a women’s and gender studies student, a young woman, and a critical third-wave feminist, I have a complex relationship with what is commonly thought of as feminism. We all know the stereotype: utter the word and one thinks of rallies, of bra burnings, of consciousness-raising. In short, of the white middle-class North American feminism of the ’60s and ’70s—the women’s movement.

In both my academic and personal discussions, I am often critical of the movement’s reliance on the essentialization and universalization of a white, western, upper-middle-class, and hetero-normative concept of “woman” and the implications this has had, and continues to have, for those that don’t fit into this envisionment of what it means to be a woman. At the same time, I am aware of the amazing gains made by the women’s movement and how these gains have directly benefited myself, my colleagues, and my friends. My access to education, and the very existence of my program, are due to these feminists of yore.

While I do not think that a conceptual or actual unified large-scale women’s movement is useful or even plausible, I do think that it is still possible and productive to come together to look at the incredible variety of work being done under the banner of feminism. I look to International Women’s Day to be this opportunity to momentarily put aside differences between various women, feminists, and human-rights activists in order to celebrate, to critically assess, to make plans for future actions, and to open up space for dialogues about what it means to be a woman and to be a feminist.

Cody Yorke is a women’s and gender studies student at the University of British Columbia.

The Straight is publishing a series of International Women's Day-related commentaries on-line in the lead-up to March 8.

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