I remember the day I found out about the existence of an International Women's Day. It was back in the days when mobile phones didn't fall off trees and I had to use a Telecard to be able to call home from a public phone and ask to be picked up. I just loved buying those colored Telecards with those cute pictures on. From those many, I bought and collected, only one of the Telecard pictures got stuck in my head. It was full of tiny photos of Career Women with the title "International Women's Day" and the date 8/3. I remember it so well because I thought it was lame and hated it. I really wanted a cartoon.
Since then, that date stuck in my head and I would get all excited whenever it came and would go around and wish women a happy holiday. In my head, this day only brought an image of women screaming "Power to women! Women rule!".

It wasn't until a few years ago that I stopped paying any attention to that day. I was sitting in front of my computer and reading online news and I read about FOUR cases of domestic violence that led to the death of daughters/wives/girlfriends. That was when I got to rethink the idea of having such a day and it hit me. What the hell are we celebrating? Sure women came a long way with those struggles to participate in society on an equal footing with men (Hurray! We can vote!), but why do women always have to be the weaker party that has to fight in order to get? All these celebrations and calls for women and men to fight in order to end violence against women and girls, calls for women to work and be economically independent and so on, can only mean that YES, we always were and seems like we always will be the weaker sex. We're a group that has to fight in order to get.

International women's day started as a celebration to press women's demands - demands that are directed to the public in general, and men in particular. It's all about demanding to get and celebrating getting. For me, getting means that some other group has to give, and that group is the one with the more power, and who has negotiated and decided to GIVE (whether they wanted to or not). I just wish that women were the ones giving, or even better, from that equality's point of view, to have men and women fully integrated that we don't have to separate ourselves and demand!

But then again, history tells us that strong women had to fight in order to give women, for example, the right to vote. Many strong and determent women had to put out so many battles in order to get me where I am today, which is not optimal, but it sure is better than where women stood 80, 50, 20 or even 10 years ago. Denying the desire or need  to celebrate this day denies the respect that those women deserve and denies the fact that we're still in need for strong willing women in order to walk this long road that still lays before us today and which hopefully will lead us to be in a better position tomorrow. I can only hope that we'd reach a time when the power we have is optimal and obvious we won’t need to have such a day.