Today is International Women’s Day. It is good to be called to focus on how much remains to be done in achieving equality worldwide on equal pay, equality of opportunity, female education and women’s health issues. The lack of freedom of choice for women in very many societies worldwide remains a major challenge. It is interesting that, despite the lip service paid by the West to the issue, in practice its foreign policy shows that it does not put any genuine weight at all on the issue. The western powers’ closest allies are regimes which are among the worst abusers of women.
On a lighter note, it is also rather charming that International Women’s Day, designed by Communists as a rather heavy handed propaganda vehicle, morphed through the actions and desires of ordinary human beings into a celebration of romance. Throughout the Eastern Bloc, International Women’s Day became indistinguishable from the Western practices of Valentine’s Day, only with the gifts and flowers and dining taken to even higher levels of corniness. Restaurants throughout the UK will be busy today as couples involving at least one partner from our brilliant new large Eastern European population go out to celebrate. Including us.
Valentine’s Day, incidentally, is banned in Uzbekistan by the nutty President Karimov who views it as another example of “Western decadence”. The ban is actually enforced by Uzbekistan’s all pervasive police state. To take people’s mind off it, 14 February has been declared (entirely fictitiously) to be the birthday of the Emperor Babur and a national day of celebration. Only don’t celebrate by buying flowers or taking your partner out to dinner…