International Women's Day. Magdalena Kuwik

Officially celebrated in 29 countries across the world including Brazil, Vietnam and Zambia. For some a nice occasion to hand a flower and receive a smile and a kiss in return; for others day when they claim for their rights louder than usually; for small group of women time to draw attention of “civilized world” to the tragic position of women in islamic countries. The way of celebrating the Women's Day shows the situation of women over the years.

Nowadays 52% of the total population of UE are women. Nearly 60% of people with higher education are woman. The first women to vote got their right 146 years ago. Women live average 7 years longer that men. Considering the numbers it is really unbelievable that they are still less than 9% of leading board in corporations and 36% in European Parliament (but in some european countries they are hardly visible in governments).

Public life

What is especially significant in the presence of women in politics is that they usually occupy less attractive minister position such as education or culture whereas ministry of defense is reserved for men. What's more the best-known female politicians are known for their devotion to... women's rights. Very seldom they are appreciated for their high skills in economy or justice.

The first question we might ask is how can we expect the increase of women in public life is the specialize in very few spheres? But this question is misleading because women are educated and work in absolutely all fields. Then the real question we should ask to boost the the influence of women in public life is: why they limit their political activity to only few areas? Are there fields where the “weaker sex” is truly weaker? Or just fills weaker? Or maybe women know they are perceived to be weaker in some areas and therefore are afraid of the amount of obstacles that have to be overcome to succeed?

If we analyze the history of the increase of female students at universities we can see how the revolution works. At first young girls checked their abilities in human sciences. They would study to teach literature, history, biology. Then administration, medicine and low joined to the areas where women got their degrees. Today girls are more or less half of students of technical universities. Still the sex proportion varies between faculties but the amount of female engineers is just huge.

Is the government the last bastion to gain? Is that the real aim of feminists? Are we witnessing the final stage of women's revolution? According to the pace of changes in position of women in social life we might expect that very soon the Women's Day will be limited to flowers and wishes. If there's nothing more to fight for you can simply enjoy it.

Everyday life

While wives became economically independent from their husbands; single girls changed their image of pitiful ones into proud ones; something really surprising happened in families. Due to the obvious biological reasons women are still much more involved in caring the babies and rising the children. When children can go to playschool women usually come back to work. The fact of being a working parent is more or less equally respected by all the family members. But what about taking care of the homework? Whose job is that in a modern families? Well, the generation of the current thirties was raised in totally incoherent values. Girls were told that to be happy they would have to be well educated, economically independent, married to a men appreciating their intelligence and skills and participating in around 50% of homework. Boys were told that they have to educated, have a well-paid job to carry all the financial needs of their families, to marry a nice women who would take good care for him, the house and the children....

How can it not lead to misunderstandings; small fights between partners and frustration of both sides? Men can sometimes feel useless (woman can do everything herself) while women are disappointed by the lack of support from her partner's side. But there is no such thing as a perfect model of partnership. For sure it's not a mathematical sum of equal duties or contribution in the family. When it comes to emotion men and women are more alike than we usually notice, we both need our partners to accept us the way we are and to have faith in us. The perfect relationship is just a source of strength and motivation for both partners.

Women around the world

While some of us have strong arguments regarding the equal rights or roles of men and women in a modern society there are still millions of women have totally no rights. It is not an exaggeration to say: millions of women are slaves. Obviously in each society there are women who do not care about politics and feel their destination is to be a housewife or just feel more comfortable when they are away from public. But in many countries of Africa and Asia very young girls are forced to get married with much older men. In those cultures husbands can do anything they want to their wives (including raping and beating to death) and never be punished for that. That happens every very close to us – even muslim families who live in UE or North America force their 13-14 year old daughters to marry totally stranger men. Only very few organizations help those gils and they are always managed by women who went through this hell but were lucky and extremely brave and strong to stand against their families and religion.

Considering the amount of women without real rights in “the modern world” it is really hard to estimate how much work has to be done to make the International Women's Day a celebration of the final equality between men and women.