Clearly, All Women Are The Same
“I am a woman,” said Girl 1. “No way, I am a woman too. I am so glad to have met someone who is exactly like me,” said Girl 2.
I wrote “A Day Without Women… What would you do without us?” on the white board at the office of my work. I was excited to come back and see the responses of women and men alike recognizing the effort and vital role women do play in everyday life. There was some comedic comments such as “It would be less loud.” This was written by my male supervisor. But there was another comment that looked to sound like one of my female supervisors .
She had wrote “ A lot of women can not afford to take a day off.”
Why even on a day celebrating womanhood,many women are often left not recognized nor included in the festivities because they can not spare the time and money to do so. A day of celebration became a day of isolation and class identification between the women who had the means to skip out on work and those who rely on every work day to make a living.
The irony is not lost when it comes to the purpose of the theme for International Women’s Day, which is to stand “in solidarity with those women who have lower wages and experience greater inequalities.”
This is another textbook example of how organizers, specifically the same organizers who did such a poor job with the Women’s March, still lack the representation and awareness behind what they are trying to do. To recognize women who have lower wages and undergo discrimination by encouraging oppressed women to walk away from work makes no sense. That is like saying that to celebrate People of Color, the white community must stand together. Literally, on this day, this is what happened. There is this divide because women are grouped under one giant category and universalized into being seen as struggling only in one way or form.
In Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience from Feminism Without Borders, Mohanty states “Instead, the crucial questions now concern the construction, examination, and, most significantly, the institutionalization of difference within feminist discourses.”
“Woman” does not mean one but consists of many and without proper work and representation to encompass all women, there really is no accurate representation or fight when it comes to a movement for girls and gals.
“The protest encourages women to take the day off work, avoid shopping other than in small women- and minority-owned stores, and wear red,” writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali of The Daily Beast said in her article “On This ‘Day Without a Woman,’ Don’t Leave Women Oppressed by Sharia Law Behind.”
This article by Ali goes on to discuss how women across the world are celebrating International Women’s Day in one form or another and that the struggle of all women, whatever the kind, should be vocalized and fought against. It is the Sharia law that The Daily Beast is specifically talking about.
The word Sharia translates to “the path,” or “a road that leads one to water.”
Muslims who guide their life under the Sharia law follow certain moral and religious values and principles. “Sharia represents how practicing Muslims can best lead their daily lives in accordance with God’s divine guidance,” according to Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Sharia law is what governs the country of Saudi Arabia and The Human Rights Watch found that the women abiding this law are “controlled by a man from birth until death.” In further research, the law also restricts Saudi ladies from traveling and marrying without male permission. Although, this might not be a struggle all women face, should it not be the concern of all women that a group of ladies are facing this in their country?
“This universality of gender oppression is problematic, based as it is on the assumption that the categories of race and class have to be invisible for gender to be visible. Claiming universality of gender oppression is not the same as arguing for the universal rights of women based on the particularities of our experiences,” Mohanty said.
In this case, where can the fine line be found between respecting customs and culture with oppression. I believe it starts in the choice. Not all Arabian women should be required to follow suit to this law if they personally find it to be oppressive amongst themselves.
The Sharia law controversy is whether some share the view that it is indeed completely oppressive to women that fall under the law or if it is seen as acceptable in tradition and judged by Western ideals.
“I am reminded very sharply of the twenty some years of my immigrant status in this country, of the plastic identification card that was proof of my legitimate location in the United States,” referenced in Mohanty’s work.
The controversy itself and the laws that are found are reason enough to delve deeper in research and join the platform of fighting for women’s rights.Why this is something that has to be worked on, Mohanty would argue, stems from the “politics of location.” In other words, because the Sharia law is not directly affecting Western women, at least within mainstream knowledge, it is not an issue.
“It is this process, this reterritorialization through struggle, that allows me a paradoxical continuity of self, mapping and transforming my political location.”
Just as Mohanty says, recognizing where a person or group of people stand when it comes to their representation, or lack thereof, should ignite a sense of fire and urgency into communities that are fighting for human rights. Mainstream is not giving the whole story nor will it because we live in a society where the rich, powerful, and white control the means of a story. You are not listened to until your location is seen as “legitimate.” But just as the word “illegal” has no true standing when it comes the legitimacy of an actual human life, no one rock of struggle or issue should be unturned.
