March 8: International Women's Day

"Don't be so 3/8! Behave!"

When I first heard this in Taiwan, I didn't know what 3/8 meant. I was an ordinary girl being scolded by an ordinary adult trying to mold me into what a culturally acceptable woman should be.

Then I realized that 3 referred to March, the third month of the year, and 8 to the eighth day of the month.

So 3/8 referred to March 8th, International Women's Day, the day to commemorate the political, economic and social rights and advances of women. And yet in Taiwan, it was used as a term to refer to girls who were silly, outspoken, assertive, and otherwise "misbehaving."

Rather reinforces the need for an International Women's Day, don't you think?

There are many events happening around the world and in our hometowns to mark International Women's Day. There will be marches and speeches, poems and songs about how far women have come, what rights we have now, and how far we have yet to go, what barriers we still face because of our gender.

There will also be everyday women, going about their everyday lives, living their lives as if their lives and aspirations were as important as everyone else's. Because they are.

And ultimately that's what all our women's rights struggles are about. Equal access to jobs, schools, health care, and lives free from sexual harassment and violence should be the norm, not the exception.

Equality will be achieved not only by mass protests, lawsuits to fight discrimination, and community organizing. Equality will also achieved by the everyday actions of women asserting their rights in everyday situations.

And that's a great way to commemorate International Women's Day too.

March 8 Shero: Laura Kofey

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar.

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March 8 Shero: Laura Kofey (1893? - March 8, 1928)

The most successful Universal Negro Improvement Association organizer, next to its founder-leader Marcus Garvey. Her origins are steeped in mystery. She claimed to be an African princess who migrated to the US in 1926 to support UNIA programs. Her success and popularity earned her Garvey's ire. Denounced by Garvey, her supporters expelled from the UNIA, she left to set up her own African Universal Church in Miami. Her sermons were so well-attended, drawing away from the local churches, that the local black clergy oppsed her. She was assassinated on March 8, 1928, her murder never solved, but it was widely suspected that UNIA supporters were involved.

March 7 Shero: Susan McKinney Steward

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar.

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March 7 Shero: Susan McKinney Steward (1847 - March 7, 1918)

Brooklyn, NY African American physician, hospital founder, women's rights activist. She served patients of any race or economic background, often not charging those who could not pay her fee.

March 6 Shero: Pearl Sydenstricker Buck

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar.
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March 6 Shero: Pearl Sydenstricker Buck
(June 26, 1892 - March 6, 1973)

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings."

Nobel and Pulitzer-prize winning European-American writer, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, she weas raised in China. Her writings introduced millions of Americans to China and Asia. Her 100+ books and many essays addressed racism, sexism, imperialism, life in Kansas, and her own life. She organized two foundations to benefit Asian and Amerasian children -- one in the US and one in Asia. Her book The Good Earth was on the bestseller list for months, sold 2 million copies, was translated in 30 languages, adapted for stage and film, and won her the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1932.

March 5 Shero: Josephine Herbst

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar, published by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and Big Red Media, Inc.

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March 5 Shero: Josephine Herbst

(March 5, 1892 - January 28, 1969) European American leftist journalist, "proletarian novelist," one of the most important American writers of the 1930s. Born in poverty, she was forced out of her government job in 1942 and endured government persecution until 1954 for her politics. Her epic Civil War trilogy -- Pity is Not Enough, The Executioner Awaits and Rope of Gold -- published in the 1930s, remains one of the great literary works in the proletarian style of literature.

March 4 Shero: Mabel Hampton

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar, published by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and Big Red Media, Inc.

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Mabel Hampton (1902 -1989)

"I, Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my Black people." African American lesbian activist, co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives (Brooklyn, New York).

Women's History Month begins

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.

These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar, published by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and Big Red Media, Inc.

Many if not most of the women on the calendar are not well-known, because most women's individual or collective stories are lost to history. Perhaps because they were, as described in the calendar,

women who have been rebels and fighters against patriarchy, who opposed and fought invaders and aggressors to their homelands, and who represent radicals and revolutionaries of their times and societies, who if they were alive today could continue to serve as sheroes, spurring us on to work for an equitable and pluralist society and world.

They sound much like the women we work with at Refugee Women's Network.

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March 3: Petrona Chacon
African female slave who in 1840 was elected "queen" by the African conspirators in the Conspiracy of the Ladder in Cuba. The Conspiracy was a Cuban slave rebellion, scheduled to start in March of 1844, with the goal of immediate seizure of power. Well organized, it spread throughout towns and plantations all over the island and involved thousands of slaves. When it was brutally repressed, of the 4,000 Africans and mulattos tried by military courts, 98 were executed, 600 imprisoned, and over 400 deported.