THUNDER BAY — International Women’s Day has been recognized for more than a century, yet women and girls still face barriers in everyday life.
The flag for International Women’s Day was raised at city hall on Friday, where more than 20 women gathered to celebrate the contributions and successes of women as well as recognize the challenges faced.
“In 1911 was when it was first declared. It followed protests in the (U.S.) about something called the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which was a factory where many women worked and they were locked in, basically as wage slaves. Working conditions were obviously very poor and a fire happened where more than 100 women were killed. The resulting protest started the call for international recognition of women's strengths and efforts in the world, that caught on and was declared across the globe,” said Gwen O’Reilly, executive director of the Northwestern Ontario Women's Centre.
O’Reilly said it's important that we continue to celebrate International Women’s Day because most women in the world do not have equality.
“Different groups of women experience different kinds of oppression, but I would say one universal issue is gender-based violence. Women experience both intimate partner violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and many other forms of violence.
“If you are talking about Indigenous women, that violence is linked to colonization and it is what many people see as a genocide as opposed to just violence against a particular group in our society. The issues of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls are very important to consider when we're looking at those issues.
Women still don’t earn a dollar for ever dollar that men earn, O’Reilly said, adding that there are issues with access to child care, advancement in the workplace, and housing.
“All of these things intersect with race, with gender, with identity in many ways that create very problematic circumstances for women in their lives,” she said.
A lot of this work is invisible, O’Reilly said.
“We work at the Women's Centre. We work on women's equality and women's rights every day of the year, but a lot of people don't see that. What they do see is these cases where people are charged with the distribution of non-consensual images of women and they see a lot of stuff on television that glorifies violence against women, or at least excuses it. They see hockey players getting off sexual assault charges, and so there are a lot of excuses made and normalization of violence in our society.
“I think that the flag is represented by the fact that we are not going to be silent. We will keep working on issues that impact the safety and equality of women, and there are many people out there who are committed to that, not just at the Women's Centre, but people in their practices, in their neighbourhoods, in their communities, who hold these values of equality and continue to practice them,” she said.
Karen Slomke is a social worker and spoke at city hall on the recent cyber crime arrests in Thunder Bay.
“The issue of technology with the safety of women is an emerging issue that has been long standing, but is now being addressed in different ways to our legal systems. Drawing awareness to the impact of how harmful it is for girls and women to go through exploitation through their images being distributed without their consent is relevant to the times we're in right now,” she said.
Slomke has been working in the community as a trauma therapist for about 30 years.
“I specialize in helping people recover from the traumatic events in their lives. I particularly work with women; women are the primary users of trauma therapy.
“Women experience all kinds of things in our community that are traumatic for them and deserve the support to get through the interpretation of those events so that they can carry on living from a sense of their own self as opposed to living through the veil of what trauma creates.
“I hope people remember that women are important parts of our community and are doing so much to change the state of our community for women and girls,” Slomke said.
Its important to celebrate women each year, because we exist, she said.
“Our rights matter. There are still discrepancies in the safety of women in our communities, there are still discrepancies in the wages we earn, we need to celebrate that women continually grow and change the society when we have voices. You can see that through the recent changes in how women respond to crimes against them when they name themselves. We're changing the story about who dictates what's problematic behaviour and who doesn't,” Slomke said.
“Happy International Women's Day. Make sure you celebrate the women in your lives,” O’Reilly said.
