A collection of things for International Women’s Day

Just a few of the things that have caught my eye (and prevented me from working) on IWD2013. Also there was an “infographic” from the European Parliament that I had to write a separate post about.

The Economist’s daily chart for the day is a composite index using 5 key indicators across 26 countries to demonstrate where it is good (and bad) to be a woman in employment. Britain languishes below New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Poland, Denmark, France, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Slovakia, Israel, and even the USA (a country with NO paid maternity leave).

The website Talking About the T in Feminist invites poeple to submit videos speaking about why it is important to include trans people in feminism. Scottish Transgender Alliance‘s James Morton and Nathan Gale have submitted two excellent videos which say everything I could say and more.

This article about the Babayagas’ house, a feminist alternative to retirement homes in Pari, speaks to all sorts of things for me – feminism, collectivism, downright hard work. I would love to live in this sort of community as I get older (in fact, I’m planning on living somewhere like that as soon a possible).

This Oxfam campaign about equality for women in the cocoa trade is really important. I would also add – don’t buy Nestle. They are STILL promoting milk formula to women in countries with no access to clean water, which often result in debt cycles whereby a whole family has to put their income towards milk products which are then thinned down so that baby and everyone else ends up malnurished.

This next image was doing the rounds on facebook, with a quote from Dale Spender. While I agree with the overall sentiment, the part about “practiced no cruelties” is jarring. With BurchMooregate still fresh in our minds, it is easy to see the cruelty of parts of mainstream feminism.

And finally, if you are unlucky enough to encounter someone who responds to IWD by whining “but what about the poor men, why don’t they have a day?”, do calmly tell them to shut up.