International Women's Day: anger, euphoria, nostalgia
International Women's Day will be celebrated on 8 March, with women and men around the world taking to the streets to demonstrate against discrimination, violence and oppression. Europe's press takes stock and identifies a potential backwards trend.
Together we are infinitely stronger
El País author Luz Sánchez-Mellado recalls the powerful experience of her first women's demo nine years ago:
“Still a long way off from the agreed meeting point, I had to leave the car and join a sea of girls, women and senior citizens all chanting 'We want to be alive' as if with one voice. The electrifying energy of major events taking place was in the air. A mixture of anger and euphoria. ... Until I heard myself shouting: 'We are here, the Fe-mi-nists!', although I had never defined myself as such. I was 50 at the time, and for just as many years I had been battling my way through the patriarchy inside and outside my home with a lot of hard work and self-respect - and I believed, like so many of my contemporaries, that that was enough. That day I realised that it wasn't enough and that we were infinitely stronger together.”
Old ideas die hard
María Eugenia R. Palop scrutinises the counter-arguments to equality in eldiario.es:
“The far right assumes that inequality is a given, and that there have always been and will always be 'superior' beings who are called by nature to lead the herd. And these natural leaders are male, white and rich. ... Their social success confirms their merits, their merits confirm their strength, and their strength confirms their natural abilities. At the heart of this argument lies an unqualified concession to an idea of meritocracy based, however, not on business or commercial success in the liberal style, but on 'conservative' style meritocracy that consists in rigidly maintaining what it considers society's natural-material nature (of what is and must be because that is how it always has been).”
Do we really want to turn the clock back?
In Corriere della Sera, author Dacia Maraini warns against false nostalgia:
“Today we are faced with many new fears that paralyse us and ultimately inhibit our desire for innovation. ... Our certainties are being put to the test and many people are so frightened that they prefer to lock themselves up in their little houses again and hide their heads under their pillows to avoid facing the dangers. In the face of such fears, the idea that we must go back to how things were before gains strength. The 'good old family' is idealised and many are infected by this. ... The most immediate and simplest answer is: let's go back! But are we really sure that this is a good idea?”
Patriarchy mostly a thing of the past
The progress made in terms of equal rights should not be trivialised, says Die Presse:
“Of course, things are by no means all good. ... But it's also not good to celebrate a world view that insinuates that we in the West still live in a society that systematically oppresses women. After all, patriarchy may still exist in the minds of some men - not least among immigrants from Muslim countries. But in legal terms at least, its teeth have been pulled out. Nevertheless, it doesn't help women or girls in any way to always cast them as victims. Because anyone who is persuaded that they are being discriminated against will behave accordingly.”