In my opinion this day is important to observe in order to change women's rights in countries like Iran (which had many rights for women at the beginning of the 20th century but were cancelled after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.) With all the education we get in school about gender, with all of our debating, however, the International Women’s Day as it is observed right now in 2016, is worthless in my opinion. In developed countries like Israel celebrating a day just for women’s achievement is discrimination of men. The goal is to create equality, but isn’t celebrating a day specific for women’s achievements a step backwards?
For example on the International Women’s Day there was a panel that was managed by the mother of one of the students and three other mothers also took part. The first thing we saw in the hall was a little poster or a card with the slogan “I am a woman, what’s your superpower?” Its design was very cute and neat, and honestly I liked it, but then one of my friends said decisively “I’m a man.” And he definitely had a point. I’m not saying I liked it, but what could I do? He was right.
Those women said they were feminists but it seemed like they wanted affirmative action, that women should be superior to men or that they wanted to emphasize the difference without doing anything to change it. During the panel they asked the crowd a few questions, “Whose parents both work in a full time job?”, “When your close acquaintance had learned that you were coming to a Mofet class, did they ask questions that offended you?” They asked these questions, but differently, separately for girls and for boys. It wasn’t clear what they were trying to do, especially since it didn’t work: the boys' and girls' answers were quite the same, and when they weren’t, it was clear it wasn't what she wanted to hear. The leading mother succeeded to upset part of the crowd and to create lots of debating in small groups in the hall.
Every year this day raises lots of debates, and if you dedicated a few minutes to read this article, I hope it will affect you too, and will make you think for a few more minutes (or more) about this day, and its meaning.