Tag Archives: feminism

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Today is International Women’s Day and you are likely to be bombarded with posts, articles and speeches listing all the ways in which women are wronged and discriminated against. Some of it is true in some places, and there are definitely problems that have to be dealt with, but the concept of Women’s Day still bothers me, for several reasons.

First, designating one day as Women’s Day would seem to imply that the other 364 days of the year are men’s days. That is a very long way from equality. Either we should have one Women’s day and one Men’s day, or neither of the two. Anything else would be discriminating.

Second, Women’s Day tends to perpetuate the perception that women are weak and repressed and unfairly treated. But why is it that in almost every country on Earth (except Botswana, Swaziland and Mali), women live longer than men? (1). Either women are built much tougher or they live easier, less dangerous and less stressful lives than men. Women are a lot smarter and stronger than feminists give them credit for.

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Social movements generate a lot of excitement. Many people see them as the most legitimate way of enacting change in society, as they are “from below”, from the people themselves, more ‘inclusive’ and ‘democratic’. Movements that have come around since the 1960s differ from older styles of public pressure where the voice of the poor and the oppressed was expressed through leaders in trade unions or political parties. Examples of the “New Social Movements” in contemporary Latin America include the indigenous movement EZLN (Exército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) in Mexico and the landless workers movement in Brazil, the MST (Movimento Sem Terra). But how truly democratic and inclusive these new movements are is rarely a serious research question, but a mere assumption by scholars and supporters who fall in love with the idea of movements from below.

For almost 20 years, Dr. Judy Hellman, professor of Political Science and Social Sciences at York University, Canada, has written critically about the largely uncritical worship of new social movements that seems to have swept the world. She spoke to Development Roast about her once controversial views (which are increasingly becoming common wisdom) and the past and future of research on social movements in Latin America:

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