I was lucky enough last Wednesday to be invited to a celebration of International Women’s Day, lucky enough to be served good wine and canapés of melted cheese, cooked chicken and tiny of dainty puddings in shot glasses in one of London’s great establishment’s after hours when day visitors had been sent home. Don’t get me wrong I think International Women’s Day is worth celebrating, I’m just not comfortable about what we now seem to choose to celebrate each year. Too often Women’s Day seems to be a celebration of The Celebrated, justified on the grounds that such people are role models and inspirational in their success. But: the work of the world – said Marge Piercy – is common as mud, and still worth celebrating.
Last Wednesday I felt uncomfortably like a man among men. We were a room full of women –all able to be there because of the work done by other women who we pay minimal wages to clean our houses, look after our children, make our clothes and the prepared meals and cappuccinos we pick up on the way to catch our trains. They work across the world on our behalf in shoe factories in China, and by our elbow offering us another salmon canapé. And some of them are men.
Caulflower seller Brixton Market 1930s. Copyright Margaret Monck, Museum of London
On which day do we celebrate their work? Are we embarrassed to celebrate the common work that women everywhere do? Keeping the spotlight constantly on the women who get Nobel prizes and become ‘Captains of Industry’ blinds us to the poorly paid women working in that parallel shadow land that provides us with those things that make us comfortable. Next year I hope I get invited to a celebration of the value of ordinary women
