May: A Traditional Month to Celebrate Women and Politics by Linda Harmon
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s a mother, a grandmother, and a woman, there are things I can’t help but think about as we move into May. Traditionally, it opens up the season of birth and rebirth, a time associated with women and nature. It is also a political month worldwide, home to May Day, the International Worker’s Day. May Day traditions celebrating rebirth go back to the ancients. Recently commandeered by western society in the modern-day concept of “Mother’s Day,” the practice of honoring of motherhood is rooted in antiquity. Participants in older cultures celebrated goddesses and symbols rather than actual individual mothers. Both the Celtic festival of Beltane, in the British Isles, and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night* celebrated magical forces beyond human control, an attempt to merge the human and supernatural worlds into one, if even only for one night, honoring the power of fertility. Later, when many of our ancestors moved to cities and took up commerce, mass industrialization began to take place. Many people no longer had direct ties to the land, and the social change and unrest which followed led to a whole new incarnation of May Day. In the 19th century, May 1st became the date around the world to celebrate a day of international working class solidarity. People united for human rights, rights that were being trampled in the economy of the cities and towns around them. Trade unions, revolutionary parties, and governments organized demonstrations from Africa to Asia, across South and North America, and Europe to celebrate the struggle of the international working class laboring in our fields, our factories, our restaurants and even in the halls of our hospitals and universities. In 1889 Paris, May Day was officially adopted as International Workers’ Day at a meeting of the Marxist International Socialist Congress, where the hardfought battle for the eight-hour work day we enjoy today began.** Taking a closer look at the long history of the labor movement in this country, I was surprised to learn that Susan B. Anthony, the mother of the suffragette movement, actually championed the eight-hour work week almost thirty years earlier. I found out that in her paper, The Revolution, she also called for equal pay for equal work, advocated for a policy of purchasing American-made goods and was pro-immigration. Anthony was truly a woman of broad vision. According to the United Nations, the idea of an International Women’s Day first grew from the activities of these twentieth century labor movements and the first National Woman’s Day was observed in the U.S in 1909.*** It took until 1975 for the United Nations to establish an International Women’s Day, now celebrated as the United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace. Unfortunately, as this event is observed on different days worldwide, it’s a moving
target. When is the last time you heard of an International Women’s Day? Since it grew out of organized labor’s May Day movement, I say let’s bring it back to a May date worldwide and make it count for something. I can’t see a down side. According to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), empowering women fuels thriving economies, spurring productivity and growth. Unfortunately their facts indicate, whether in political bodies or corporate boardrooms, women still have a limited say in the decisions directly affecting them. They also lag far behind men in access to credit, land, and decent jobs. The U.N. urges inclusion of women in public planning as a “jumping-off point” to build the range of public services and policies that citizens expect from government. Public planning means getting into politics locally, regionally, statewide, and at the federal level. I may be cranky but I’ve had enough of the romanticizing of sexism, from the glorification of “Mad Men” to the fortunately short-lived run of a “Playboy” fantasy on prime time. The media and the pop culture PR machines need to get a grip on reality. There is nothing romantic about turning back the clock on human rights, here or anywhere.
We need to make this another international year of the woman.
Here are three concrete reasons to get involved and get political: - Women still face unequal pay for equal work, earning on average only 77¢ for every dollar. With the squeeze on every household these days, that extra 23 cents is no small change. Our families need it and women deserve it. - Women’s ability to control their reproductive lives and health is under merciless attack. The internal vaginal probe made news for a week, but Roe v. Wade is in serious danger of being overturned by Bush/Reagan appointees to the Supreme Court. - Basic access to birth control is also under attack. Cuts to family planning programs, pharmacists being allowed to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, and the FDA’s three-year delay of prescription-free morning-after pills are only the tip of the iceberg. If you think there are too many women out there to see these rights go away ponder this: According to the National Foundation for Women Legislators, women held only 89 of 535 seats (16.6%) in United States Congress and 23.3% of state legislators in 2011. Even scarier, according to Southern Connecticut University statistics, the U.S. now comes in at 69th in their ranking of countries with the highest percentage of women in government (behind Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uganda.) (continued on page 39)
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