Today is International Women’s Day, “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.” We do that year round at our house of two moms—but the day has gotten me thinking about how I first learned about the need for gender equity.
When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, my mother taught me that there was no reason a woman or girl shouldn’t have the same opportunities as a man or boy. Both she and my father were understanding enough not to stop me when I wanted a football for a birthday present or spent my weekends playing with Legos or climbing trees. I knew these weren’t usual activities for girls, though, but somehow never let that stop me. I credit that also to my mother’s support as a first-generation feminist, as well as in part to my own stubbornness. (My father was supportive as well, and perhaps that is even more striking, given the era, but my mom, as another woman, had more impact on my budding sense of the gender inequity in the world and the need to confront it.)
I took my mother’s lesson to heart not only in my career and hobbies, but also, later, in who I loved. There was no reason I shouldn’t have the same opportunity as a man to love a woman. That wasn’t exactly what my mom had intended, I think, but to her credit, she took it in stride and became as good a mother-in-law to my spouse and grandmother to our son as I could ever have wanted.
On this International Women’s Day, then, let us remember not only the large achievements of women in the wider world, but the achievements of mothers and female mentors everywhere who have passed on to the next generation of women the message that they can be and do and love even more, proud to be women (whether assigned so at birth or realized later) and yet not limited by anyone else’s conception of what that means. The theme for the day this year is #pressforprogress—but we can press forward more strongly because of those who stand behind us.
(Posting this a little late in the day because of snow and power outages!)