Marching openly, with smiles

Towards International Women’s Day. ‘Marching openly, with smiles…….’

Russia. The end of January 2021. On the news we see Anastasia Vasilyeva defiantly playing Beethoven on her piano as the police come to arrest her for supporting the opposition. Later, on a video post she says, ‘We are marching openly, with smiles. We will not be intimidated.’

Ten days earlier, in Washington at the presidential inauguration, the world watches as Amanda Gorman, 22 years old, raises her arms, smiles, and reads her inauguration poem.  ‘We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation’ says the ‘skinny Black girl……who can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.’

Calm, resolute, brave young women standing up at the beginning of another uncertain year can surely give us cause for hope and optimism. And when we look back at 2020, we see wave upon wave of other resilient women, hundreds and thousands of them, public and private individuals, finding solutions, navigating their way through crisis after crisis, supporting one another and refusing to give in. Brave women throughout the world, standing up to oppression, injustice, abuse, dismissal, and sneering malevolence. Women who are tearing up the rule books, breaking barriers, speaking truth to power, radiating passion, care, and empathy.

Some names echo throughout the world: Kamala Harris, Michele Obama, Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg. The influential voice of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Judge, continues to be heard. Jacinda Ardern’s empathy and leadership in New Zealand have touched many. Human Rights activists, like Agnes Chow in Hong Kong and Nasrin Sotoudeh in Iran, face uncertain futures with courage.

And among the many admirable women here in the United Kingdom we can find Sarah Gilbert leading work on the vaccine, Devi Sridhar sharing expertise on Public Health, Edna O’Brien still writing passionately at 90, Lindsey Hilsum reporting from the frontline in war-zones, the Scottish poet Jackie Kay writing about her heritage. Just a few of the hundreds of women who inspire us.

There are also women whose names we will never know. The shop workers, care assistants, delivery drivers, singers, teachers, medical workers, dancers, food bank volunteers, community helpers, cleaners, council workers - the list is endless – all keeping things going. Women offering daily acts of kindness, making masks, collecting medicines, ringing you just to check, sending flowers, cakes, sympathy, making jokes, home-schooling, meeting online, just getting on with it. And of course, men are working and caring and persevering too and of course we recognise that.  But look again at how so many women are juggling jobs, daily tasks, and caring all at the same time. Marching with smiles, but without much recognition.

We have an opportunity in March. In spite of the constraints of the Pandemic, we can give that recognition and show our solidarity. We can celebrate the global and national influencers at the same time as we raise a glass to the women in towns and villages everywhere, and to our friends, relatives, and neighbours. And we’ll do it with smiles.

International Women’s Day is celebrated at the end of the first week of March and will be marked by a series of online events. Formal celebrations take place on Monday March 8th and will be advertised widely. But on Sunday March 7th in the afternoon, Milton Keynes Fawcett Group, in partnership with other groups, will be offering a ‘patchwork’ of events, celebrations, talks and demonstrations. You are invited to join us, and to bring with you the name of a woman who has inspired you during the last year. It could be anyone, from your sister to Stacey Abrams, from Lady Gaga to The Queen. Join us on the 7th to shout out for your own chosen woman, and for all the others too.

miltonkeynesfawcettgroup@gmail.com  /  @fawcett_mk  /  Instagram:    fawcettmk 


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