Challenges

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is #ChooseToChallenge. The idea is that you stand in a commitment pose, holding your right hand up like you are taking a pledge (or acting in a low-rate courtroom drama) and vow to stand up for or against something that will enhance gender equity in our society. You could Choose to Challenge domestic violence, for example, or the kidnapping of girls, or the trafficking of female children for sex work. 

Here are some of mine.

I choose to challenge the pile of laundry, that is my task to tackle simply because it has always been. 

I choose to challenge the paradox of me hating the stupid laundry, and yet feeling better and happier when it is done. 

I choose to challenge the vicious-circle-ness of me not letting anyone else do the laundry, because they will do it wrong, or late, or messily, or put the powder in the wrong slot and leave a trail of white sickly-smelling particles all over the countertop. 

I choose to challenge the goddamn pink and purple full-page advertising spread for Mothers’ Day, that suggests that a bunch of flowers and a poxy cake are exactly what every woman with children craves. Or the patronising offer of fizzy wine or branded cream liqueur, with an amusing meme of a woman hiding the drink in her teacup while homeschooling some screaming brats. Oh how we laughed at this woman who has been driven to despair and addiction! So funny!

I choose to challenge the patronising tones of the men forced to discuss women’s rights for the few days leading up to International Women’s Day, using phrases like “Just to play devil’s advocate here” so that they can rehash the same old what-about-the-menz tropes and expose their own male fragility. 

I choose to challenge the belief that women would prefer to be at home minding their children and scraping the hair out of plugholes. That they are truly blessed with part-time working and flexible hours, because it allows them to Have It All. That the ideal life balance includes repeatedly breaking up roaring matches between siblings and slicing your thumb-end off with a potato peeler. There is a much-used saying that a person on their deathbed never says “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” Well, if the alternative is days and days and days on end of vacuuming the same stupid carpet and washing the same stupid towels and putting away the same stupid plates into the same stupid drawer, then 40 hours a week in a comfy office chair with a fancy coffee machine and the ability to go to the toilet on your own sounds pretty attractive to me. 

Children are fine, like. I love them and all. Hanging out together when everyone is happy and giggling and getting on is truly lovely. Reading a story while snuggled up in bed, smelling their heads and feeling their love; that is wonderful. But let’s face it, the work involved in growing them and cleaning them and educating them is dull at best, soul-destroying at worst. And the implication that women are somehow innately better at this drudgery seems, well, convenient for the other parent.

I choose to challenge any suggestion that I am just a big whingey feminist who is ugly and smelly and who no man would want to marry anyway. 

I choose to challenge myself to stand up and say that yes, I DO prefer paid work than unpaid servitude. 

I choose to challenge the relegation of childcare and maternity leave issues to the very bottom of any political agenda. 

I choose to challenge the baffled look on society’s face when I suggest that women are treated unfairly. “But sure you’re a doctor, what are you complaining about?”

I choose to challenge clothes without pockets. 

I choose to challenge myself to calm down now and go and drink fizzy wine and eat poxy pink cake, because we all know that is really all I need.