#InternationalWomensDay
Today is International Women’s Day. It’s disheartening just how far we have to go as a country and as a world towards ensuring equality to all regardless of gender.
International Women’s Day (March 8) coincidentally falls shortly before Equal Pay Day, which this year will be March 24. Essentially, Equal Pay Day is the day this year when a woman’s salary finally catches up to what a man working the same job earned last year. In other words, a woman has to work 15 months (a whole year plus an extra three months) on average to earn as much money as a man working a commensurate job earns in 12 months (just one year).
More and more people are aware of the disparity, including the generations who will (hopefully) soon be leading us towards more equality. I’m very proud of the fact that my six-year-old daughter already talks about the importance of girls being able to do the same things as boys (her teachers told us that once she yelled when a boy told there weren’t firewomen or policewomen, saying that girls could be “fire girls” or “police girls” if they want to!).
The first protest / rally she went to was the first Women’s March in January 2017 after Trump’s election. She’s too young to remember, but we’ve shown her pictures and try to promote the idea of equality for everyone, no matter who they are or what they look like.
A big reason why women still aren’t treated equally in many countries, including the US, stems back to religion unfortunately. Without going into a huge post critical of religion, I’ll just share one of my favorite songs, “Eve” by Shelley Segal, an Australian singer-songwriter who I saw perform at the 2016 Reason Rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The song talks about the Judeo-Christian story that women are to blame for the “Fall of Man” and the effects of this misogynistic belief on women for millennia.
You can click on the album cover to hear “Eve” by Shelley Segal on her official site.
“Eve” is available on Spotify, iTunes, and elsewhere, but here’s a link to it on her official website and the lyrics to the song.
If you like it you might consider finding out more about her or helping an independent artist by downloading a track or album — An Atheist Album is one of my favorite albums, but she does have other material not dealing with religion, too.
Here’s to hoping that #InternationalWomensDay raises awareness and that we won’t even need an Equal Pay Day sometime during my daughter’s lifetime.
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🚨 Before you leave — Vote for who you’d like to get the $50 March donation from eclecticmisc.org, and leave your comments below about your choice, the site, whether you think coffee or tea is better, or anything else random.
Plus, I’ll be posting daily and will have exciting news for the site later this week!! 🥳
