Saturday January 21, 2017, was a (an?) historic day as women’s marches took place all around the world.  According to the official Website, there were 673 marches with a total of 4,814,000 attendees.  The photos are truly inspirational … throngs of people (women, men and children) in pink pussy hats holding up signs for democracy and equal rights and respect for everyone, regardless of their gender, race or sexual preference.

So I am adding my voice to all of theirs …

Women have equal opportunities with men largely in name only.  I won’t deny this is still significantly better than 50 years ago, but our fundamental way of thinking needs to change before women are truly on equal footing with men.  We can’t view a man as “assertive” and a woman as a “bitch”.  We have to see emotion and sensitivity as strengths and not weaknesses.  And we can’t look down on a woman who chooses a career over children or tries to juggle both.

A few years ago I read a novel called The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin.  It imagines a world where there is no fixed gender … at any time an individual can be the one who ends up getting pregnant, so everyone lives with the possibility of carrying a child.  It’s an interesting thought experiment on how society could change if all of us internalized the responsibilities of being the one to give birth.

A lot of the challenges that we women face are related to reproduction.  Our bodies are a battleground, and unlike men, they affect our jobs.  After all, not until the Pill was introduced in 1960 could women plan for careers without the uncertainty of having to give them up if they got pregnant.  We are still fighting for the choices that men take for granted.  We may choose to be mothers, or we may not; we may choose to continue our careers, or we may decide to work in the home … but they are our own decisions, and they’re hard enough to make without having someone regulate or judge them.

They say it’s hard to know what it’s like for someone else until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.  Perhaps men should don our stilettos and see.  Here, they’re studded Saint Laurent paired with a zippered Givenchy jacket from Farfetch (http://www.farfetch.com) and black leather J Brand leggings from Net-a-Porter (http://www.net-a-porter.com).

I, for one, feel empowered.