International Women’s Day: Flowers Are Great, But What About End of Oppression?

Patriarchy is not the shark.
Patriarchy is the water.

I want to start this article like an essay: growing up, I saw women receive flowers on International Womens Day.

How much flowers can do – in a country where victim blaming is prevalent, domestic violence is rampant, Istanbul Convention is still not ratified, and sexist comments are “jokes to be understood” – I still don’t know.

Well, actually, I do – and this is what my new podcast episode is on.

Although there’s no single podcast episode that can summarise the multiple and intersectional struggles we still have to take on, I give a quick list of “issue areas” – simply known as reality to so many – that we have to talk about on International Women’s Day, or any other day.

I talk about different types of violence and aggression, health and medical studies, legal systems, and more. Then, I invite all of us to stay on this path of learning and unlearning and to see our role in changing the current paradigm into one that is simply kinder to all of us.

It’s a dense episode. And yet, it doesn’t even pretend to be an exhaustive list of “what’s wrong with the world.”

Thank you for your time listening to it and for doing the inner work that we all need to do.

Find my article on violence against women here.

You can find my podcast episode on the importance of political representation and how women are often seen in politics here.

Sources cited and resources to explore:



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