We recently celebrated International Women’s Day and that made curious about whether there was a specific girls’ day also, and there is! The 11th of October is International Day of the Girl Child (I should have known, sorry). There are several women/girl related days throughout the year.
Those days are all great, as I understand that there needs to be visibility in terms of women’s and girl’s issues, and marches like the one on International Women’s Day make me feel really proud to be a woman.
I continued my search of the United Nations International Days as I wanted to find out whether boys had their day as well. To my surprise, they did not (again, I should have known), but there is a common day for all children.
These “special” days exist for a reason, many reasons, in fact. Consequently, I find it very tiring that even though the differences are getting smaller, they are taking what seems to be a long time. I still have to debate, which is good, do not get me wrong, with other female friends about feminism. I do not know about other countries, but in Spain, lately there is this saying: Ni machismo ni feminismo, which could be translated as neither machismo nor feminism. Equating feminism to machismo, when they do NOT mean the same thing. I recognise that the debate within the movement is still going and will continue as we are different and do not want the same things, which is understandable. But the bottom line of pushing forward together, should not divide but unite us even more as there are still many obstacles in our way.
-Alicia García Pajares
Junior Girl
Girl Museum Inc.