Photo credit: https://pratnala.wordpress.com

I had a pretty heated discussion with a friend of mine last Sunday. When I sent her my usual “Happy Women’s Day” emphatic message, the cold response I got left me stunned. “I don’t celebrate Women’s Day”, she coldly replied. “It’s a myth, just another way to to victimize ourselves and celebrate the fact we have so much left to do.” Huh? She wasn’t the only one either, a few of the women in our group joined in unison, declaring this whole gender equality thing to be just a myth, another way to play the gender card and feel forever victimized.

As an outspoken feminist and women’s rights advocate, I was stunned. One because I could never imagine anyone thinking of gender equality as a myth, with all the progress accomplished so far for and by women int he last 20 years. Second, because this was my friend. A woman I grew up with, with whom we discussed our own mothers’ struggles, our respective fathers not keeping up their promises and being strong presences in our lives, and the resulting effects this is still having on us. How could you not wholeheartedly, fully support this?

Once I got past the initial shock, came the anger, then the dismissal. Could gender equality be a myth? Should we stop associating the concepts of sex and equality? Should we just consider work to be work, regardless of the sex of the worker? Is pop star Beyonce right in her essay entitled “Gender Equality is a Myth“?

We left it alone for a while, and I hope someday soon we can pick up the conversation where we left it off. For now, I can’t help but wonder:

Have we been missing the mark somewhere all along?

The Corporate Sis.