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Women dressed as witches with placards reading 'Equality is magic', 'We are mad as hell'.
When will International Women’s Day be about progress rather than just equality? Photograph: Van Badham
When will International Women’s Day be about progress rather than just equality? Photograph: Van Badham

International Women's Day's #pledgeforparity is holding women back

This article is more than 8 years old

Rather than just asking to be equal with men, on IWD 2016 couldn’t we instead ask how we can improve the world for both men and women?

Another year, another International Women’s Day (IWD) – and yes, before anyone asks in the comments, there is an International Men’s Day. I’ve written before about how important it is that we have at least one day a year which highlights the disparity in rights, freedoms and economics between men and women, but this year even I am questioning the point of it. Not because I think we’ve finally hit equality, far from it, but because this year’s campaign pledge for parity seems so completely toothless.

Looking at what the official IWD website is asking of its pledgees, it seems to be little more than a vague commitment to treating people like human beings. The IWD website includes a page of “global leaders” such as Sir Richard Branson and, errr, a few CEOs of businesses you might have heard of, possibly. They’re all citing their commitment to the pledge for parity. But when that pledge requires such basics as “helping all women and girls achieve their ambitions” and promising to “value men and women’s contributions equally”, it doesn’t exactly seem like world changing stuff. When did we get so obsessed with parity anyway? The more I look around the world, the less convinced I become that the definition of success we’re trying to shoehorn women into is really that successful at all. Rather than calling for parity, shouldn’t we be calling for progress?

IWD was started in recognition of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York City, where women protested against their working conditions. This wasn’t a protest asking for parity, it was a protest asking for improvement – for workplace safety and economic and political rights. These were women who wanted to make the world better not only for women, but also for men. It was about improving the workplace, about elevating everyone rather than just bringing women on to the same level. Perhaps the current state of women’s rights around the world makes us think that asking for parity is already such a huge step that expecting anything more would be impossible. But why should women continue to struggle in a world that doesn’t even reward all men equally, merely those who buy into the alpha male stereotype we’ve been promoting for so long?

I don’t want to start a war of the sexes by suggesting that “women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition” (Timothy Leary or Marilyn Monroe – depending on which part of the internet you believe) but it does seem to me that in asking for parity with men IWD has rather given up. Do men really have it that good? They are more likely to die at their own hand. Almost twice as many men as women are victims of violence. And they are also far more likely to commit that violence. Men are more likely to kill someone and more likely to be killed. On a more prosaic level, they will spend less time with their children and will feel judged if they take up flexible or part-time working. We might think we want parity for women with men but in reality what we really want, and need, is for women to have a role defining society.

This International Women’s Day let’s stop asking for parity and instead ask for progress. Let’s ask for a world where violence against anyone is seen as abhorrent, where every parent is expected, and encouraged, to spend time with their children, and where women finally feel they can have a voice in setting the expectations of what makes a civilised society. Let’s ask for more this IWD, not just for women but for everyone. That’s what it’s really about after all.

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