What is the point of International Women’s Day on March 8?  It was first established for working women’s rights in 1911 and for decades was barely observed outside the Soviet bloc, where its origins in women’s struggles were suffocated in rituals of men giving flowers and chocolates to female family members and employees.  Such belated Valentine’s gestures may be enjoyed by some, but they hardly make up for the high levels of alcohol-fuelled violence and the post-Cold War erosion of women’s rights in Putin’s Russia, including access to jobs, training and equal pay.

Moreover, I’ve witnessed how this patronising ritual can be used to embarrass and undermine rather than empower women.  When Russian diplomats made a great show of chivalry by doling out red roses to the few women ambassadors at a United Nations meeting some years ago, the recipients had to smile woodenly, but they shared their fury in the privacy of a women-only gathering afterwards. The occasion was an International Women’s Day debate on disarmament and development but the romantic parody of the Russian action diverted attention from the serious issues of armed violence and women’s security needs and prompted other male delegates to chuckle indulgently at their female colleagues’ discomfort.

Here in Britain most people are unaware of the significance of March 8, though International Women’s Day was trailed in the Independent on Sunday by a front page and feature on “The best and worst places to be a woman”. Some results in this top twenty list begged more questions than they answered, not least about the criteria and implications of such comparative statistics and compilations.

Britain didn’t feature very high in any category.  That would not have surprised participants in the Million Women Rise march through London on March 3.  This year’s focus was girl children, and the march was led by feisty young women from the many walks and colours of today’s British Isles, with drums, songs and some great chants.  On arrival in Trafalgar Square, we were treated to singing and dancing from a young African-British troupe — mostly girls, but with a couple of boys as well.

Yet for all the smiles and chants about women’s power, the Million Women Rise demonstration was not so much a celebration of this symbolic day as a call for us to commit every day to resisting violence and oppression.  One after another, women from the Congo, Iran, Somalia and Sri Lanka spoke about the torture, rape and violence inflicted on women who have engaged in liberation struggles for political and human rights.  Leila, an Iranian activist, related the bitter lessons learned by women in Iran who had actively participated in the revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979. When their male ‘comrades’ handed power to religious leaders the clocks were turned back on Iranian women, who were consigned to the political shadows with mandatory hijab and oppressive laws. Pointing to the political upheavals in neighbouring Arab countries, she warned that women’s rights and freedoms must not be sacrificed to other political agendas pushed by military or religious factions, even in the name of democracy (which has many versions).

The harrowing experiences of many speakers spelled out how militarism and violence against women are inextricably connected.  Speaking on behalf of Women in Black, I also made links with the work of women in the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) to halt the arms sales and trafficking that put guns into the hands of the marauding gangs and rapists who prey on women and children in Africa, Latin America, Asia and also our own cities here in Britain and beyond.

From knives to guns and on up to nuclear weapons, these are the tools that underpin the continuum of patriarchal violence that movements like Million Women Rise, Women in Black, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Code Pink have been confronting for many years.  Last year, the 9 nuclear-armed countries – Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States – spent over $104 billion (£65 billion) on nuclear weapons, according to US-based “Global Zero”.  And in case anyone thought that nuclear weapons were a cheap deterrent, the overall military budgets of these same 9 states came to an obscene combined bill of over $1,052 billion (£663 bn), with the US Pentagon responsible for more than half.

In just  that one year, 2011, Britain’s military bill was around £36 billion, of which £3.5 billion were just for the Trident nuclear weapons system and the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) bomb factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield. And that’s even before Trident is replaced for a further 30 years at a cost likely to exceed 100 billion, according to CND.  As speakers pointed out during the Million Women Rise demonstration, that’s money stolen from women’s real security needs, including better education, health services, safe and affordable housing, rape crisis centres, and legal aid for domestic violence and other ‘family’ cases.

Speakers from the British Asian and Chinese communities, from student organisations, and the trade-union-based Coalition of Resistance described how women and girls are being badly hit by the Coalition Government’s cuts in social services and disability, housing and other benefits. Despite several waves of feminism since International Women’s Day was instituted in 2011, women in most countries still carry the major burdens of caring for children and the sick, elderly and disabled. As explained by a speaker from the campaigning group Women in Prison, women are also more likely to fall through the cracks when cuts are made to services that provide help to deal with problems related to alcohol, drugs, homelessness and domestic violence.

At the end I sang “The Mountain Song” by Holly Near. Written in the 1970s to support Kentucky women opposing the destruction of their mountain homes by strip mining, the song was adapted by Greenham women as a powerful song of protection, hope and resistance.  “I have dreamed on this mountain since first I was my mother’s daughter and you can’t just take my dreams awayŠ”  For us the mountain symbolised the high but attainable objectives that we needed first to dream into possibility and then work together to build – peace and justice in a world free of nuclear weapons.  Million Women Rise adds the difficult but achievable dreams of women yearning to live free from violence, of girls demanding education and resources to control their fertility, develop their potential and love whomsoever they choose.

Standing in the way of our human rights, democratic choices, freedoms and political power is a high ugly wall of military-industrial profiteering. We have to break militarism down to size in order to see and reach the mountain of our real security.

When millions of women rise around the world, we won’t need an International Women’s Day.  When millions of women rise around the world we’ll be able to harness all the days, years and resources we need to deal with climate change, poverty, violence and war.

It’s 7pm on Wednesday 7 March at Housmans Radical Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, King’s Cross, London N1 9DX. Entry is £3, which is refunded if books are bought during that visit.

Thursday 1st March 2012

6pm-9pm

Rich Mix

35-47 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch E1 6LA

(Shoreditch High St Stn, Liverpool St/Old St tube)

6pm Reception with Rushanara Ali MP

6.45pm Speakers and Performers including:-

Kate Williams historian, TV presenter & novelist, Carolyn Simpson SERTUC Women’s Rights Committee, Chandan Mahal The Women’s Library, Natalie Langford Climate Week, Bethan Cansfield Amnesty International, Jessica Metheringham-Owlett political researcher, with films by WORLDwrite, music and dance by Nari Diganta, Sister Elements, Equator WOMEN of the WORLD, stories by Shamim Azad, poetry by Comfort and Jammie Sammy from Apples & Snakes and Bridget Minamore from Tongue Fu.

RSVP info@alternativearts.co.uk 020 7375 0441

www.alternativearts.co.uk

The Sugar Girls: East End Life and Work at Tate & Lyle’s Factories

An event at Bishopsgate Institute, Monday 19 March, 7.00pm in association with the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi with Melanie McGrath and Jerry White.

Authors Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi will be speaking about their new book The Sugar Girls,  which tells the true stories of female workers at Tate and Lyle’s East End factories in the 1940s and 1950s. Following the real lives of four former ‘sugar girls’, and weaving in experiences drawn from interviews with over fifty more, the book reveals the heavy, repetitive work, sexist regulations and sometimes hazardous conditions they endured – but also the great sense of community and unrivalled social life that the factories provided, and the fierce loyalty that they inspired.

Joining them to discuss The Sugar Girls  and life in the East End will be Melanie McGrath, bestselling author of Silvertown  and  Hopping,  and the award-winning historian of London Jerry White.

www.thesugargirls.com

www.bishopsgate.org.uk

www.raphael-samuel.org.uk

Valentine’s Day Event – 6pm – 8pm on February 14 ^th

Whether you’re searching for love or heading out to a romantic dinner, join us for a glass of wine in a special late night opening of the Florence Nightingale Museum. At 7pm, the Director Natasha McEnroe will give a short talk on the role of nurses in romantic fiction.

Tickets are £8 per person.

To book please contact Katie Edwards

katie@florence-nightingale.co.uk

0207 620 0374

Here are some highlights (in date order):

Lesbian Lives: Stories and Memories from Russia and Poland
Wednesday 15th February, 5.30pm
What was life like for lesbian and bisexual women in Soviet Russia? How have public images of homosexuality changed in post-communist Poland? Does geographic location matter, when sexuality and gender are concerned? How do the stories of women from Eastern Europe differ from those of Scottish women? To find out more and share your thoughts, join us at this LGBT History Month event.

LGBT History Month Open Day
Saturday 18th February 10 to 3pm
Are you a young lesbian or bi-sexual woman interested in finding out more about the pioneers of the LGBT movement? We are looking to recruit volunteers for the National Lesbian Archive based at the Library and we need you!

Body Talk: Women’s Health, Body and Mind (free)
Monday 27th February, 11am to 2.30pm
A group discussion on women’s health based on the film “Killing Us Softly”, Jean Kilbourne’s film about the impact of media images of women.

She Settles in the Shields Book Launch
Thursday 8th March, 12.30pm to 3pm at the Library, refreshments provided (£3/free)
Join us on International Women’s Day to celebrate the lives of migrant women in Glasgow. She Settles in the Shields tells the story of women who travelled to Pollokshields from all over the world, in search of a new life.

Mapping Monuments to Women Launch
Saturday 10th March all day, Scotland wide.
On Saturday 10th March, we want women across Scotland to go out and find the monuments, landmarks, street names and buildings that mark the lives and achievements of women (whether famous, humble or notorious) who have helped to shape Scotland.

West End Women’s Heritage Walk (£7.50)
Sunday 11th March, 2pm
Back by popular demand, this pioneering women’s heritage walk, developed by women historians at GWL, reveals a hidden history of the West End: from pipe-smoking forewomen to revolting schoolmistresses.

A ‘Twenty Years of Changing Minds’ GWL Anniversary Event
Thursday 22nd March, 5.30pm (£3.50/free)
The first of our anniversary events in 2012 will be the launch of new art and writings commissioned by GWL and supported by Creative Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland.

Displaced Women: Multilingual narratives of migration in Europe
Wednesday 28th to Friday 30th March 2012
This interdisciplinary conference will provide a forum for discussion of the issues facing women who have moved from one culture to another and have adopted in their daily lives and creative work a language other than their ‘mother tongue’.

Women & Munitions (WWI)
Thursday 19th April, 6pm (£3/free)
Capturing daughters’ memories of their pioneering mothers.

Hysterical Women and Graphic Grrrlz
Wednesday 16th May, 5.30pm (£3/free)
Join Heather Middleton, Glasgow based illustrator and zine-maker for an illustrated talk on the history of graphic novels and zines by women.

Hidden Gems of Garnethill (£7.50)
Sunday 22nd April, 2pm
Join this Women Make History walking tour in Garnethill spotlighting the women who pioneered European art movements, designed the banners for suffragette processions, created the first (and only) women’s library in Scotland and made Garnethill into the most exciting cultural and multicultural hotspot in Glasgow.

Women of the Necropolis (£7.50)
Sunday 20th May, 1pm
Experience this fantastic women’s history walking tour that digs the dirt on Victorian society, unearths women’s achievements and exhumes the history of some of the women buried in the Glasgow Necropolis.

Battling Belles of Bow
Saturday 18 February, 11am (120 mins) £10
This walking tour centres on Bow and follows in the footsteps of Sylvia Pankhurst. She chose east London as the starting point for her campaign for women’s suffrage; and seeing the plight of working women, she also established a creche, restaurant and model toy factory in the area. See highlights along the route where supporters of the Suffragette movement worked including the famous Bryant & May match factory, site of the match girls’ strike of 1888.