A Bit Of Deep Thinking About Women's History Month

I love and hate March, both at the same time.?

Women's History Month is coming.?The outreach?has already begun and my calendar is lightly sweating, thanks to early bird planning teams. Come March 2023, it'll be groaning under the strain. Everyone wants to partner with women-forward organizations for events during Women's History Month. It happens every year.

On the one hand, I'll take any opportunity to celebrate women. It's not just what I do, it's who I am. I love having the freedom to tell the stories and elevate the discussion year after year. It's my time, it's IHKC time. As the Goonies say, it's our time.?

On the other hand, WHM (and any other identity month, organizers of Pride Month, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, etc. all feel it,?I'd imagine) serves as a reminder of a few things:

1. A year is twelve months long and yes, we get a whole month to celebrate. But that perennial month pales in comparison to the depth of contributions made by women throughout our history. The same contributions that have gone largely overlooked, those that have spanned millennia and are deeper and more important than we could ever really?acknowledge. A month is not enough. It will never be enough. I don't know that there's a unit of time measurement that could do women justice. What do you call multiple eons? Is that close?

I can celebrate women in September. Sure. I can and do. But March is the only time I don't get pushback about it and that's nice. A breather, if you will. For one month out of the year, everyone else is in it with me. Or at least, they don't feel empowered to complain about my fairly one-note messaging. I don't see as many eye-rolls. The comments are relaxing, for a very brief moment in time.

I can't help but think... women still exist in April too, ya know? I and InnovateHER are available all the other months.?Wouldn't it be cool if we could celebrate the achievements of historically excluded people all year long? And wouldn't it be amazing for that to be such a core part of our cultural experience that it didn't even bear mentioning? I live for that day. At InnovateHER, we hope to manage ourselves out of a job as soon as we become obsolete.

2. Speaking of celebrating, I will always believe that it's not actually possible to celebrate any marginalized group unless you are also willing to advocate for the things they need to overcome barriers to success. Better yet, let's celebrate by breaking the damn barriers.

By creating opportunity, you exponentially increase the chance of success for ALL people. With things like access to capital,?bodily autonomy, rejection of rape culture, affordable, accessible healthcare and childcare, representation in leadership, equal pay for equal work - we're all winners. Countless studies have found that communities in which women are empowered to lead and innovate are happier and healthier with the impact experienced at micro and macro levels. We see more financial reinvestment, generational wealth, better health outcomes and more robust support for education.

Fixing the ways in which our society is broken is crucially important to any and all future celebrations. March is a time to reflect on our hard-fought victories, yes - but it's also a time to talk about, vote for, and fund initiatives that support women and other gender minorities. In other words, it's a time to draw your line in the sand to eradicate the inequities?and indignities women face on their?path. Too many folks want to do the first part because it's fun?- without thinking about the second.

3. We're still not getting the narrative right. I look around every March and see really inaccurate presentations of issues ALL women experience.?

In 2020, everyone was excited to enthusiastically proclaim 100 years of suffrage but women didn't get the vote in 1920 - WHITE women did. Black women didn't see their voting rights federally protected until the Voting Rights Act of 1964. Even now, we see marginalized communities unduly impacted by restrictive voting laws and voter suppression. We experienced a win in 1920,?yes. But let's not forget that many are still running the race.

Discussions around wage inequity tend to be framed improperly because while we publicly acknowledge that white women take home .82 on the dollar as compared to the wages of white men, we don't mention the .54 on the dollar earned by Latina/Hispanic women.?To say nothing of the fact that the rights, safety, support, and even lives of transwomen are completely left out of the conversation.?Moving forward, we have to ask ourselves, "Are we telling the real story - or just the part of the story that feels more comfortable?"

Our problems are deeper, more nuanced and a hell of a lot more systemic than the conversations we tend to have and it's really important that we knock that shit off. Women are not a monolith and by prioritizing feminism that centers?white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual women, we disinvite human beings with layered identities from the conversation. In doing so, we create exclusive spaces that obscure hard truths and give ourselves permission to ignore the wildly different economic realities experienced by many women without regard for intersectionality. We fail to acknowledge how factors like?race and ethnicity, disability, access to education and age add to lived experience and contribute to inequity. Because it's easier. It's comfortable in a?space fraught with tension. It's what we have always done.

4. A while back, I was in a meeting where someone felt completely comfortable sighing and saying, "I'm so tired of talking about diversity." (Word to the wise: not a cool statement at any time, but especially not when I'm within earshot.)

Here's the thing - I'm also tired of talking about it. Really. However, I imagine I'm tired for a different reason. I'm tired because personally, I'd rather see action. Words are cheap and we have to remember that our discomfort and fatigue about all the talking is nothing compared to the?absolute?exhaustion people living it feel. I promise you, the talking will continue until we have bridged the gaps and minded our misogyny. Our racism. Our intolerance.

Our closely held structural, engrained systems are designed to prey on so many. So can we please, please get on with it already? I will absolutely shut up the moment advocacy becomes unnecessary - but not a moment before.

I say all of that to say this - you may think I'm jumping the gun by bringing this up at the tail end of December - but I had some time and more importantly, I know that event planners and organization leaders are already working on programming for Women's History Month. My email inbox is a testament to that fact.

All I'm asking is that, as you develop your vision, keep things like the above in mind. It's only by changing the narrative, and then ALSO taking action, that we change the systems that hold us all back. And someday, that's going to be a history we can really celebrate.

My inbox is open if you want to talk about it. How does April look for you?