Women's Day

Women's Day. The fact that there has to be a women's day means something. What does it mean exactly? That women have lived (and still live) oppressed in a "modern" society that hides a lot of the old patriarchy. In this article we will try to analyze the real world in which women live.

In 2022, in Spain, 49 women were murdered by men who were romantically related to them. The funny thing is that many of the newspaper headlines have an almost positive air, saying that this is the best figure in recent years. There is no best figure. The only better figure is ZERO. As long as there is any number above zero, it will be a tragedy and it should be explained like that. This is what I mean when I say that the "modern", advanced and egalitarian society in which we live, continues to hide many of these subtleties. Because they are still very much within us, even if we try to deny it.

What comes to your mind when we hear "feminism"? Angry women. Women who hate men. Women who, basically, protest for everything. The truth is that the word "feminism" has a very negative connotation. However, after a great research about this word, I have come to the conclusion that feminism is LOVE. It is not a hatred of men. It is not protesting for the sake of protesting. It is not a hatred of the system. It is a fight from love. A love for yourself. A love so great for yourself, for your rights, for your life, that you decide to tell the world about it.

Feminism is not a movement born out of hate. If we hated men, if we hated society, we would not spend our time trying to change it. Because we don't change what we hate. We run away from what we hate. We put it aside. However, if we put our energies and our work on behalf of a movement that tries to change things from the root, it is because we deeply want it.

Because we are subjected, because many of us have seen how we have been bullied in our jobs when we became pregnant and decided to "enjoy" our maternity leave, because we see how our male colleagues grow faster than us, how they are expected to do things that we must demonstrate. That is the daily life of many of us. And precisely for love of ourselves, we decide to demand equality.

But it is not only a matter of advancing in the workplace. Life itself is full of subtleties that make us perpetuate the patriarchal system. Without going any further, when you create an account on any platform/app, you must define the treatment you want to be dispensed. You must indicate whether you are Mr., Mrs. or Miss. Why? Why don’t they ask the same question for a man? Does it matter to whoever is behind that app whether I am married or not, if I am a woman? Surely not, but it is a legacy of society.

A society that has perpetuated comments like "old maid", or "be left on the shelf", or "don’t miss the window". How many times have we heard these words, even from our close circles? How many times have you been asked why your girlfriend does not get married or why she does not have children yet? Have we ever asked why a man does not get married or why a man does not have children? They don't miss the window. They have a choice. For them there is no such term as "old maid", but there is "golden bachelor". Have you ever heard of "golden bachelorette"? No.

The domestic sphere is also full of these subtleties I am referring to. How many times have we heard that a man is a great father, because he helps with the children, or that he is a very good husband, because he helps at home? These considerations only show how low is the bar with which our society measures men and how high it is for women. A man does not have to help at home nor does he have to help with the children, because both, the children and the house, are not the woman's responsibilities and the others help. They are shared responsibilities, where both should divide the tasks according to their possibilities and their personal organization. The concept is not that the woman should be helped. It would not cross our minds to say that a woman is a very good wife because she helps at home or that she is a very good mother because she helps with the children. It would be very strange and absurd to hear it. However, we keep hearing the opposite.

The result of this type of comments is that we continue congratulating men for the minimum and demanding more and more from women.

This is one of the reasons why women suffer many problems of a very great magnitude. Depression. Did you know that women suffer from mental health much more than men? The WHO has estimated that 25% of women suffer from depression compared to 12% of men.

In every country the data is replicated. The age ranges tend to be similar as well, and it is also similar that women in cities suffer more depression than those who live in more rural areas.

But why are more women suffering from depression? For every severe case of depression in men there are 3.5 severe cases in women.

One of the reasons that explains this is the high expectations and the social model in which we live in.

The wage gap or the huge effort and sacrifices a woman has to make to be considered for managerial positions, in addition to the incessant male violence she suffers - the sexual harassment of women at work, due to the power of men, for example - mean that women who suffer violence at the hands of their partners are unable to leave home.

In addition, gender stereotypes and the social roles attributed to women are largely to blame for these depressions. From the time we are born, we girls receive messages from everywhere -family, school, television commercials- about how we should be and behave. 

The very high standards to which we are subjected as children are, in many cases, difficult to achieve. Not all of us will be dedicated wives, perfect mothers raising happy children, having a brilliant career, keeping a well-maintained home, finding time to do yoga and spending time with our friends. In the vast majority of cases, we do not meet all the requirements of this list, and that is only an exemplary list. Failure to meet the expectations that society imposes on us raises depression rates.

As if this were not enough, women are socially attributed the role of caregivers of the family and the home. Assuming this role often means giving up other things, or our own desires or aspirations. There are studies that reveal that the incorporation of women into the working world since the middle of the 20th century has meant an increase in women's working hours compared to men's. On average, a woman works 15 hours a week more than a man. There is only one explanation for this, and that is that the fact that a woman works outside the home does not mean that she delegates or stops taking responsibility for the care of her children or her home. Working outside the home for a woman who is a mother means, according to studies, an overload of stress and less time to devote to leisure and self-care. When these situations become chronic and last over time, they often lead to depressive problems.

Therefore, women suffer more depression than men and the cause lies in the high expectations we have. Again, the scale with which we are measured is not the same as that of men.

After all this. Instead of preparing our daughters differently, the reality is that we keep preparing them as we were prepared from childhood: adapt to a life in which men have power over you. We prepare our minds to normalize situations and comments that are not ok. We may not see it in our daily lives, but it is only because we do not pay attention. If we open our eyes, we will see it. From our parents, from our teachers, from our friends, from our bosses, from TV commercials, from magazines, from the internet, from social media, and a long etcetera.

Girls are taught not to be too bossy. Our parents told us from the time we were little when we wanted to organize the line of children on the swing set: "She's bossy", "she's too bossy". These negative connotations of these words make us internalize this behavior as dangerous. "You can try to organize, but not too much, be careful, don't bother the others, don't let people think you're too bossy”. The reality is that you don't hear this in a boy, or not so much. Why? Because we assume, as a society, that it is normal for a boy to develop organizational and management skills, it is assumed that he will be a boss, a leader.

Then, when we grow up a little, and we assume that we should not be too bossy, that is, that we should not raise our voices too much, and we get in front of the TV, we see ads. Detergents, vacuum cleaners, irons, kitchen cleaners. Until recently, all the main characters of these ads were women, and moreover, well-dressed women, with their hair and makeup done, and of course, smiling. The opposite of how you are when you are vacuuming your house, doing the laundry, ironing or cooking, probably with a bun, in pajamas, and without any make-up. That is the image of perfection that has always been imposed on us. Those advertisements for creams, make-up, aesthetic medicine clinics, food supplements that help you feel full without eating... are always starred by women, even today. What does this mean? They are messages. We must look presentable. We must always look young. Are you 50 years old? The goal is to look like you're 35. We should have a slim body. Look pretty, make up (aren't you pretty already?), be attractive. What for? To be accepted in society. So that they don't see that you have hair where it shouldn't be, dark circles under your eyes, wrinkles or that in a bikini you don't look like a celebrity.

However, we are also educated in contradictory messages. Don't make up yourself too much. Don't wear those pants, which are too tight, don't wear such short skirts, stop worrying so much about your appearance, go out more demurely, come back early, always go with someone, tell us when you go out so we can wait for you. Is this normal?

What is normal is not to educate us to protect ourselves from the danger that a man can pose. The normal thing is to educate our male children in feminism as well. The normal thing is to educate men. To teach them from a very young age that they have no power over women. That they have no right to have an opinion about our looks or our tastes. That we are equal.

But how are we going to "wake up" and how are we going to stop normalizing undesirable behaviors if we are listening to it every day? Songs of mythical groups and artists, and supposedly "progressive and groundbreaking", such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix or Guns n' Roses, that we hum every day, are deeply sexist with sentences that, if we translate are truly horrifying, where they talk about beating women, or even killing them, with total normality. 

But that did not stop there with groups from the 70s. Today, artists who write songs that go around the world and whose videos accumulate millions of views (especially among young people, whose brains are in full boiling phase), talk about abuse and rape as if they were totally understandable behaviors in a man, who is angry because his girlfriend has left him. Among these singers there are many (more than we think, unfortunately), who also charge millions of euros and position themselves as artists before the whole world. And what is worse, as role models for young people.

We could talk about many more things. Many more problems and issues that concern us women, such as reproductive health, the deeply sexist language to which we are already used to, the very little investment that is carried out in research on exclusively female health problems, the traps hidden behind the empowerment that society is selling us. But this is an article and we must close.

March 8 is still very important, because we need to remind ourselves of all this from time to time, but even more important is the work we do the other 364 days of the year. The work of thousands of women around the world who fight for real equality of rights and obligations in life. The work of so many mothers who raise our sons in feminism. Because that is what feminism is, equality. So, no, we don't understand those who tell us they are not feminists. Don't you seek equality?