Doin' it for Themselves.. and the Rest of Us

OK, so it's not international womens day until Thursday, but if you're going to take advantage of any of the events associated with it, a heads-up is surely in order. The UK has close to 400 events planned, compared to just over 200 in the US, which is a reason to be proud but not, I fear, cause to rejoice in the sad plight of one of the wellsprings of feminism. Today's Guardian has a feature on Annie Lennox, to whom we owe the title of today's blog. Barclays Woman of theYear in 2010 Lennox thinks that gay men should be feminists and that men should be welcomed into the movement anyway. The paper has further comments by Woman's Hour's Jenni Murray, with a plea for affordable child-care (which may in practice be gendered but affects single-parents of whom there are a considerable number of men) and Australian novelist, humourist and campaigner Kathy Lette, who points out that whilst in the West the odd woman who gets through the glass ceilling is then expected to keep it clean whilst she's up there, in the developing world one woman dies every minute in childbirth - a statistic that's definitely beyond gender. There's going to be a lot of posturing and drama around on Thursday, and we might hope that some of the more sophisticated rethinkings of the gender divide don't get lost in the noise of the debate on how much flesh female pop stars should or should not reveal. The bottom-line remains, however, that globally and historically women have had and continue to experience structural and personal disadvantages that are frequently life-threatening simply because of their sex. If it takes a bit of drama and a few choruses once a year to get that point over, it's hardly being strident.

Eurhythmics - Sisters are doin' it for themselves

Guardian IWD 100 anniversary page 2012