'Help me not to ask for help'

BY ADITHA Dissanayake

"I married beneath me. All women do", said Lady Nancy Astor and changed Simone de Beauvoir's statement about The Second Sex, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute, she is the Other", forever.

But surely the real silence was broken ages ago when adventurous women like Suppa Devi ran away from home to join gangs of travellers, seeking independence.

Moving further back in time to ancient Greece, one must acknowledge Lysistrata, who initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war, and later on, the Parisian women who took to the streets during the French Revolution, calling for liberty.

But the most fierce of struggles for equality, justice, peace and development began at the turn of the last century, in the industrialized world, during a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. The year was 1908. The country, the United States of America. For thirteen cold winter weeks, 30,000 women garment workers went on strike.

They marched the streets of New York protesting against low wages, long working hours and inhumane working conditions.

Their slogan was "Bread and Roses" - bread symbolizing economic security and, roses, a better quality of life. The result was that two years later, in August 1910, at a meeting in Copenhagen, the Women's Socialist International decided to commemorate the strike by observing an annual International Women's Day.

Now, on March 8th every year, the world celebrates International Women's Day - the day which tells the story of ordinary women as makers of history; the day which recalls the centuries old struggle of women to participate in society in an equal footing with men.

No longer wanting to be associated with roses and sweets as poets like Keats had described them, no longer docile and timid and easily dismissed with a "sugarplum" women today, have begun to play, not only the roles of wife and mother, but also the role of the breadwinner.

With the increase in access to education and proper health care women's participation in the paid labour force has grown; grown so much so that today in Sri Lanka a sizeable contribution to the country's economy, especially in the tea plantations and the garment industry are made by women. About 600,000 of them, working abroad, contribute a foreign exchange of more than 70 billion rupees.

Undoubtedly, since that day in 1908, when the shirtwaist makers in the garment factories of America took to the streets women have made tremendous progress towards achieving equality with men.

The silence has been broken, and through the celebration of International Women's Day, a platform for action towards building a just and developed society has been achieved. May it not be long before the Latin American poetess, Alejandra Pizarnik's prayer - "Help me not to ask for help", comes true.