Tuesday, March 08, 2011

100th International Women's Day (by Suzie)


Women in Egypt and Tunisia and other nations have just as much right as the men to remake their governments, to make them responsive, accountable, transparent. We will certainly be watching and the world will watch.
Hillary Clinton said this at a presentation of the International Women of Courage Awards today before the news broke that men had harassed and insulted women who came to Cairo's Tahrir Square to celebrate International Women's Day, the Washington Post says. A journalist said there were thousands of men and only a few hundred women.

At the ceremony with Michelle Obama, CBS reported: "Clinton also announced the State Department would team up with Goldman-Sachs as financial partner to expand the 10,000 Women Initiative to include 100 more women in the next two years with a focus on Indonesia and Haiti."

The Guardian has a roundup of news, including: "In all more than 2,000 events around the world were planned, details of which are posted on the IWD's website which managed to survive three separate "denial of service" attacks throughout the day." The site was down for a "number of hours." I wonder if any of these hackers are the same guys who support revolutions by men?

Elsewhere, men were yelling, "Show me your tits" because today also is Mardi Gras.

The antifeminist CounterPunch has an article touting Catherine Hakim, who contends: "Sex differentials in the professions are due primarily to substantively different work orientations and career choices among men and women."

More on the economic front: Forbes features an insipid article by "ForbesWoman" Kiri Blakeley titled "What The Heck Is International Women’s Day?" She writes "about celebrities, models, entertainment, zeitgeist, trends and women." Too bad a college aptitude test doesn't ask, "Which one of those words doesn't belong?"

Kiri, please meet Clementine Ford, a "feminist antagonist" in Adelaide, Australia. You might find her "Simple steps to become a feminist" useful.

The video above features a silent Daniel Craig, with Judi Dench narrating. If it takes Daniel in drag to get across a message on equality, so be it.

What did you do to mark this day? I gave information to doctors about how nonprofits can help their patients with sarcoma at the annual meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists. Plus, I passed out beads in hopes of luring docs to my table.