Our next project is to organize a public reading which will take place on March 8, International Women's Day. Below I have posted a short text about what this day means along with some quotes about women. After that, there is a poem about becoming a woman. You can read the poem and watch the author recite it if you want. Remember, all comments are welcome.
International Women's Day
By Simran Khurana
International Women's Day is not about asserting the superiority of one gender over the other. It is not about petty quarrels about who gets to do the dishes after dinner. The United Nations instituted International Women's Day to commemorate the contribution of women in the socio-political sphere as well as in global peace and security.
Historically, women have been suppressed and treated unfairly. Even in the West, women were not given equal opportunities for work. Women were not given voting powers and they could not participate in political activity. Relegated to the hearth and household, women had little else to do other than raise children.
International Women's Day can be traced back to the women's suffrage movement in the late nineteenth century. Over two centuries, women achieved tremendous progress in every walk of life. Women's emancipation took new meaning when women traveled to space, and fought alongside men at battlefields.
Yet we find many pockets in the world, where women are suppressed and demeaned. Gender bias exists at every social stratum, even in the most developed societies. In some regions, patriarchal societies diminish the role of women in important matters. This masochist thinking has brought about a serious economic and social downfall.
Whether you are a woman or man, you must know that International Women's Day celebrates your emancipation. Had it not been for women's emancipation, free thinking would be impossible. An educated woman can raise intelligent children, which in turn creates a self-reliant society. Celebrate the spirit of womanhood with insightful International Women's Day quotes.
Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.
· Farrah Fawcett
God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met.
· Harriet Beecher Stowe
Women are the real architects of society.
· Barbara Bush
Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well!
· Virginia Woolf
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
· Timothy Leary
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
· Nancy Pelosi
Women are leaders everywhere you look -- from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.
· Eleanor Roosevelt
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
· Robert Elliott Gonzales, Poems and Paragraphs
All the world's a stage, and it's a dead easy guess which sex has all the speaking parts.
· Margaret Sanger
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.
· Mel Gibson
I love women. They're the best thing ever created. If they want to be like men and come down to our level, that's fine.
· Ellen DeGeneres
I really don't think I need buns of steel. I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon.
· Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
· Margaret Thatcher
If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.
"Sound Advice"
by Hope Anita Smith
"Get your hands off your imagination,"
my grandma said to me.
And then she and my momma laughed
long and loud
as they hugged me to them.
"You got to earn the right to
plant your arms akimbo.
You got to work a little harder.
You got to live a little longer.
You got to finish becoming a woman,
and then you can stand and
place your hands
upon your hips,
and your hips will hold them up."
I don't agree with the sentence said by Eleanor Roosevelt. Many women in the world have no choice and any opportunities. Do Afghan women allow to be treated as they are? Of course not. It was easy not to feel inferior in Eleanor's social possition!
ReplyDeleteThanks for you comment. Playing the devel's advocate here, Eleanor Roosevelt said that nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. I think the operative word is "feel". Of course, people can treat you as if you were inferior. The spirit of the quote may be that we should never let anyone degrade our sense of self-worth and dignity. On the other hand, your point is well taken that it is often too easy to look down from the top of the social ladder and wonder why everyone else is complaining.
DeleteI take your point. You are right about the meaning of "feel", that is the key. However, in my opinion, those Eleanor's words are beautiful but not true. I can think about women who are mistreated by their husbands, genre violence is called. Because of its psychological consequences women end up losing their self-esteem and even believing they deserve the mistrait. Unfortunately not everyone is strong enough to keep the dignity in adverse circumstances.
DeleteA friend of mine always says that "you are not hurt by the one who wants to hurt you, but by the one who can". You decide who that one is.
DeleteMaybe I'm wrong, but in my opinion, the problem is that most of the Afghan women don't believe they deserve being treated well, that they have different rights than men (to say something), because their society tells them that it has always been like that and it'll always be. That's why those women who fight, or try to be different finish in the way we know. This is quite similar to ill-treated women in our country. Although things have changed a lot, we still have many women murdered by her husbands, most of them without even had denounced them. Why? We let them hurt us and then we ask them for respect? If we don't respect ourselves, how do we expect to be respected?
Hi Caroline, I liked your comment. It reminds me an anecdote my mother-in-law used to tell.
DeleteShe had a maid who married a widowed man that was said to hit his wife. Before the maid's wedding, she was asked for a friend not to marry him, but she ignored her, and did it. One year later, that friend ran into the maid and asked her what about the marriage. "Oh", answered the maid, "great". " Really? ", asked the friend. "Hasn't he hit you yet?". " Oh, no", said the maid, "the first time he intended it, I took a broom and beat him so strongly that he has never tried to hit me again, and we are very happy".
Well, this story sounds like a joke, but is completely true. Anyway and going back to ill-treat, we can blame society, manners, even religion, whatever you want, but it is not women's fault. They are the victims, not the guilties.
ReplyDeleteI clap your good taste choosing the quotes as well as I really loved the poem. It's
touching. Thank you.
Keeping that in mind, I think it would be great to add some quotes a little bit daring.
Wouldn't it?. You are very keen on using the irony. Take the risk. The mouse female is
always ready to grasp a piece of cheese. What I mean is that a smart criticism is one of
the best weapon to impulse ourselves to make it well. The self-indulgence is the enemy.
I am glad you liked the poem.
DeleteYou ask me to be more daring, to take a risk. Well, I think I'll fling that right back at you. I would invite you to post some more controversial writings that you think would challenge our readers to overcome their insidious self-indulgence. However, here is a quote that may start things off:
Chilean president Sebastián Piñera: “When a politician says ‘Yes,’ he means ‘Maybe,’ when he says ‘Maybe,’ he means ‘No,’ and if he says ‘No,’ he’s not a politician. When a lady says ‘No,’ she means ‘Maybe,’ when she says ‘Maybe,’ she means ‘Yes,’ and if she says ‘Yes,’ she’s not a lady.”
Nobody falls to the sexist sentence, so, in this International Woman's Day I'm bringing to you a short biography of an interesting woman called the Ireland’s Joan of Arc. Her name: MAUD GONNE.
DeleteShe inspired the Yeats ' poem "When you are old" we read in class and, as you will see, she didn’t' remind by the fire missing the lost love. Instead of that, she fought for the human rights and for her country.
She was born in England into a distinguished and wealthy family. Her father was a colonel in the British Army and her mother died when she was still a child. She lived in Paris and in England.
After falling in love with a French journalist Lucien Millevoye, she became involved in politics, fighting for Irish freedom from England and founding in 1900 the “Daughters of Ireland”, a women republican movement which provided a home for Irish nationalist women and produced a monthly journal- “The Irish Woman”- about feminist and political topics.
Her relationship with the poet and playwright William Buttler Yeats inspired some of his poems and she helped him to establish the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
She was imprisoned twice for being a political agitator and, in 1903 married to John MacBride, giving birth a son -Sean- who became also involved in politics and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
In 1938 she published an autobiography, “A Servant of the Queen” and died in Dublin in 1953.
Maud always refused to marry Yeats and said: “History will thank me” for not marry him, since she believed that her refusals were one of the things that fueled his writing.
ReplyDeleteAS THE WAY WE ARE
My mum always tell me that I must be an animal in my last life. That's way I suspiciously
get on well with them. However I might have done something terribly wrong because now
I'm a human being. But one sympathetic God forgave me in the very last minute and
decided I am a woman.
Wright some of us might be the queens of controversial feelings wich every day move the
world. But let's see where is the root of this sublime behaviour.
The way we are is mostly due to the 'Femenine Essence'.Yes, kind of natural gift, a
treasure wich only the female gender has, 'The Hormons'. They play an important role
in our behaviour. The same divine essence makes the mum lyon be a perfect hunter as
well as the mum elephant (one of the sweetest and smartest animals ) shows us such a
caretaker role wich should be adopted for some females of the human race. Or haven't
you ever seen a primate like the gorilla caressing, kissing her cub and crying his death.
So, I won't take anything for granted among us.
Every human being, female or male shold take advantage of this treasures and lead them
properly
Then,we'll succeed as a mother, as mate, or friend.
ReplyDeleteThis is off records. RVego welcome home!!!!!! Here you will feel free.
You can write whatever you want and noone will correct your mistakes. (On the other
hand is a shame).:-)
thank my great mother of English, thanks for your advice and patience. The weekend read the bolg calmly and write something. thank you very much kisses
ReplyDelete