International Women’s Day 2021
Choose to Challenge — Celebrate & Take Action
When I reignited this medium page last Fall, I led with a piece on the reality that women’s bodies, even in 2020, remained a battlefield. Still among the most popular pieces on my page, A Dark Legacy was written in response to forced hysterectomies at ICE detention facilities in the United States, but also referenced the historical reality
“that women’s bodies have always, and often, been treated like a battlefield, a territory to control in a grasp for power.”
Those words remain all too true, as I was reminded recently in various ways: by news from Venezuela about women losing access to birth control and, with it, control of their lives; in a discussion with a friend recounting the high rate of domestic violence women experience in her state; and by the continued impediments many of my women peers face regarding promotions, equal pay and the simple right to walk down the street without fear or harassment.
Today is International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. And while there is much to celebrate, for example:
- the first woman Vice President in the United States
- the significant amount of women involved with the Perseverance Rover mission on Mars
