Making the World Better for Women--and All of Us

It is International Women's Day, and I feel like I should have something new to say.  But the reality is depressing, and there's not a lot new to say. 

If we look at basic statistics, like how much women earn compared to men in the very same jobs, we see that the U.S. has still not achieved equality. If we look at who is in charge in most workplaces, it's white men. If we look at violent crime rates, there are some years when violent crime rates have fallen--except for rape. If we look at representation in local, state, and federal levels, we see that members of government are still mostly white and male.

And that's in a first world country. The picture for women in developing nations is bleak.

This year, I'm thinking about Ukraine.  I'm thinking about all those women who assumed they were living in a European country, and therefore, they had some modicum of safety.  And now, most of the men in their lives are fighting off the Russian invaders, and they have sole responsibility for the children, and they have decisions to make about the safety of themselves and their children.

I wonder if we will someday feel the same way about climate change--everything is tentatively OK, except there's been a looming threat, and all of a sudden--or at least it feels like all of a sudden--the threat goes from looming to viciously upon us.

I think of pictures of packed train stations in Ukraine.  And I wonder about the pictures that I didn't see in past refugee crises.  I know that these are not the first packed train stations in the past 30 years.  During the hasty retreat from Afghanistan in August, we were in the midst of a big move--is that why I don't remember similar pictures?  Were there similar scenes in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea?

There are years when I could make the argument that we're making the world safer for women--not this year.  This year is the kind of time when I wonder if we ever make progress, if the idea of progress is just an illusion.

Yesterday I was in a parking lot, putting my purchases into the back of my car, trying to ignore the man standing by the car beside mine.  He was barking into his phone, spewing profanities, something about Ukraine, and what did people expect with who they voted for, and these people could just eat a sandwich made of excrement, they could eat a f*** sandwich.  I thought about the time not so long ago when most people would not curse like that in public, especially not when women were present.

Once I would have scorned the idea that we should change our behavior because women were present.  Now I wish more of us would change our behavior for the better, regardless of who is present.

Maybe in this way, we'd really make the world better for women and for everyone.