The local feminist and international communities converged last night at Agate Hall as students and community members joined the ASUO Women’s Center to celebrate the 100th Annual International Women’s Day.
“There’s a cliche that a woman’s work is never done,” Women’s Center Director Brandy Ota said in her introduction of the evening. “In the new global economy women work and work hard.”
International Women’s Day first began in accordance with women’s labor movements in the early 1900s. Since then it has evolved to honor women and their fight for equality in all facets of life. According to the event’s keynote speaker — world-renowned ecofeminist and environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva — this fight has a far reaching impact for everyone.
“Patriarchy in today’s world is not only in the form of patriarchs at home,” Shiva said. “The real patriarchs are capitalists, corporations.”
Shiva discussed the women’s rights movement in relation to the corporate food industry. Capitalist patriarchs, she said, have developed farming practices that exploit third world nations and contribute to environmental degradation. Female farmers, on the other hand, have developed production techniques that yield far superior results that are ignored by big business. Institutionalized sexism, she argued, has prevented these types of ideas from being implemented.
“We have the capacity to build a world that is better than the one built on violence, greed and exploitation,” Shiva said, adding it is time women seized the opportunity to do this.
“The issue of women’s power is not only about stopping the violence against women but also recognizing that women have in their hearts and their minds another view of the world that we’d like to share,” Shiva said.
Last night a diverse group of women got the opportunity to do just that.
Students, authors and professors spoke on everything from gaining more rights for women with disabilities to stopping the disfiguring practice of acid burning women and girls around the world.
The celebration is a means of both recognizing these issues and uniting the campus with the international community, Women’s Center Public Relations Coordinator Nina Nolen said, and organizers try to make sure a wide diversity of student and community groups are represented.
University sophomore Moira Flanigan said this international component is what makes the celebration so relevant.
“(We Americans) don’t really connect ourselves with the rest of the world,” Flanigan said. “By having an international event like this, we acknowledge our place in the global community.”
This is the event’s eighth year at the University and has been one of the Women’s Center’s most successful.
Eugene resident Aaron Lieberman, 41, said he came because of his interest in human rights in general.
“Women’s Day is an expression of the ongoing movement for human rights around the world,” Lieberman said.
Other attendees had similar sentiments.
“I think there’s a lot of work in the fight for equality — gender equality especially,” said Evans Temi, 24, of Eugene, adding that he will come every year until the fight is won.
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