Celebrating Women: International Women’s Day

Once a year we get to thank our moms not only for everything they do, but essentially, for our very lives. Without them, well… clearly we wouldn’t be here. Hopefully we acknowledge our moms often in addition to the second Sunday in May. Another such day recognizing women occurs this Wednesday: International Women’s Day. While it is not well known in the United States, this day is celebrated as a major holiday in many countries around the world. Last weekend I had the opportunity to have dinner with a woman from Russia. She told me it is such a big holiday there that it is known simply as “March 8.” I was fascinated, and surprised that with such a strong view of equality for women in our country, International Women’s Day doesn’t have a greater presence in the United States.

This may be changing. It seems likely that International Women’s Day underlies this Wednesday’s celebration of “A Day Without A Woman.” At first blush, either of these is as profound as Mother’s Day; yes, without women none of us would be here. But I think the message of both Wednesday celebrations in particular is to address equality of women in the work force. I have a visual image in my head of Rosie the Riveter, the quintessential poster of a powerful woman, without whom many of the US planes, ships and munitions of WWII would not have been manufactured. Over 19 million women stepped up to bat for the war effort. Our country’s—and the entire Allied Force’s—victory would have been at risk without our country’s women as well as the women from around the world who stepped up in the same capacity. The sad news is that when the war was won, most of these women were asked to leave their positions so that men returning from war could step into them again, and were relegated back to the home or to lower paying jobs.

As a woman, as a mother, as a professional, I see firsthand the discrepancy in pay between men and women for the same work, as well as in opportunity itself. The term “glass ceiling” only need be invoked to communicate one of the many challenges that women face in today’s professional world. This is true for women regardless of race, color, ethnicity, sexual preference or gender identification, although clearly if women who are not considered minorities face these issues, how much more so do those of recognized minority status.

Perhaps ironically, yet nonetheless of note, it is important to state that just as not one of us would be here without women, just as certainly, none of us would be here without men. This is where standing together is so important. It is easy and right for us to choose to embrace the one who is cast down or cast out. This is what human dignity teaches us. This is what so many faiths teach us. Yet as we do so we must remain cognizant of the whole within which we reside—we do this work to bring people together, to create unity, to raise the level of dignity and wholeness in our world. So as we choose to celebrate women this Wednesday, under either the United Nations’ theme of Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030, the International Women’s Day theme of Be Bold for Change, or simply reaching out to acknowledge the women in our lives, may we do our work for gender equity in a loving context, embracing our men as we embrace our women, to ensure the world is a safe, equal, just place for us all.

Rabbi Robin Damsky