Q&A: Not Just ‘Some’ Women's History
Poster from Women Against Violence Against Women
The second installment of our Q&A with NGM Community Manager Veronika Ilich from International Women’s Day, on Women’s History Month and why we’d do well to reimagine it in a more nuanced and inclusive way—even if that means leaving the comfort of simple narratives and comfortable collective memories.
Read part one of the interview here.
Q: So, Veronika, if we go back to that hypothetical alien, the one you’re explaining IWD and Women’s History Month to—where is the centre of the Venn diagram that unites all these different women activists and movements you’ve been telling me about?
V: Well, for me, it all comes back to the fact that we all suffer under patriarchy, and we all suffer differently. But there is a common experience of living as a woman and suffering under patriarchy. And I think that's something that people have found they can tap into—that people are like, ‘yup, patriarchy sucks for women and femme people and here's how.’
And when a movement or a group of people can tap into that, it’s powerful even though not every group is going to necessarily see or identify with the same sets of stories within the movement. Different issues will speak to different folks, but that doesn’t diminish the impact of what happens when they all work together.
So for one group, say the Suffragettes, who were largely white and middle/upper class, the big issue for them was winning the vote. That was the key to their movement. And at the same time, there were these other groups of women who were fighting for the rights that mattered to the working class. From their perspective, voting wasn’t going to make an immediate difference in the lives of those women—they needed better hours, safer workplaces, safer homes, removal of racist barriers, that kind of thing—but what moved the dial at these moments in history was the fact that all these folks, with all these interests, were organizing against patriarchy.
To me, what matters is remembering the ways in which, as members of this feminist movement, we are all still working towards that same goal, even if we're doing it different ways.
Q: So in that case, what’s it for? IWD and Women’s History Month—is it a time to celebrate, a time to mourn or remember, and time to get angry or take action?
V: What I would hope would be, like, use it to learn *Women's History*—not just *some* women's history, right? Because there's a lot more to it.
And secondly, sure, celebrate, but don't stop at ‘celebrating’ or ‘raising awareness.’ Don't stop there. Agitate! Organize! Those things I think are going to do a lot more than, like, an awareness campaign. It’s like, ‘great, we know—women know, we are aware what patriarchy does.’
I think it’s a problem that we often stop and are content with this sort of liberal feminism that just talks about how we want women to be 50 percent of CEOs, and then, everything will be better. And yet, we still have massively exploitative systems. Like, I wouldn’t be super happy with a female Jeff Bezos, just like I’m not happy with a male Jeff Bezos, you know what I mean?
Q: Tell me more. We’re used to talking about these benchmarks and thinking in those terms—Women in the boardroom, women in trades, women in STEM, women in the military, women in public office. Is that valuable, or not so much.
V: I think why so many folks have become really invested in the idea of representation is, it’s true, we can’t be what we can’t see. Representation does matter and we do need to get more folks ‘in there,’ so to speak. And we know too that it’s not just about idealism: they’ve made the economic case for it, we know that companies with more diversity actually perform better.
And looking at that, I think, that’s great. That’s awesome. But then I think too—I believe it was Angela Davis who said it—she said that ‘diversity is not synonymous with justice.’ It’s not the same thing.
So you could say, OK yeah, we’re going to recruit more women—but if they come into a space that's super patriarchal, white supremacist, super capitalist, then great, you recruited more women, but you're going to lose them, right? Or they will still suffer in those spaces. Or, like the female Jeff Bezos, they become part of the problem. It’s superficial change, not transformational.
And I don’t think we can pin all our hopes on those women who can climb the corporate ladder to get into those spaces and completely revolutionize them. That’s a lot of pressure just on women to fix all of our problems.
You would hope, maybe there are some men out who will take notice too. And more and more of them are. But that’s not IWD or Women’s History Month that’s going to wake them up to patriarchy. It’s one-on-one conversations with each other that have the biggest impact.
Q: If you had to pick one feeling that represents where this Women’s History Month is meeting you at, how it feels for you this time around, what would it be?
V: Is it boring to say perseverance? Perseverance and also appreciation. Like, the more I learn about different women in history—especially how indebted we are to women who were hella brave and wildly radical for their times, the ones who pushed so hard against the status quo—the more I learn about them the more I'm just like, ‘man, I need to step my game up.’
But also like, holy shit—thank you to the people who blazed a trail so that I can give a shit.
Veronika Ilich is the Community Manager for Next Gen Men. Find her at NGM events, on the Modern Manhood Podcast, or on our online Inner Circle forum! She is passionate about social justice, and in particular, gender-based violence prevention and eliminating poverty. She is currently pursuing a Master of Social Work at the University of Calgary.