Sunday Paper Exclusive: Gloria Steinem & Eve Ensler Reflect on International Women’s Day

Today, we recognize International Women’s Day, a global observance celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. For their thoughts on how to commemorate this occasion, we turned to legendary social activist Gloria Steinem and renowned playwright Eve Ensler.

GLORIA STEINEM

1. What does International Women’s Day mean to you?

It’s a Remedial Day, a time of celebrating the female half of the human race, even though we don’t have half the power and are not even half of human beings anymore because there is so much violence against females, from female infanticide to domestic violence and sex trafficking.

We wouldn’t need such a day if patriarchy hadn’t controlled women’s bodies in order to control reproduction, and if race and caste hadn’t doubled that in order to keep races and castes separate.

Maybe one day in the future, there will be a Human Day. Then we can celebrate the fact that gender and race are no more, and share our common humanity here on Space Ship Earth.

2. How do you think women should celebrate and/or acknowledge this day?

Any way we fucking well please!

3. What should women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s know today?

Whatever each woman needs to know to develop the unique talents that lie within each of us – a combination of millennia of environment and heredity that has never happened before and could never happen again. You probably know what it is because you forget what time it is when you’re doing it!

4. What do women in their 30s have in common with women in their 70s?

Living in a world that is still pretty racist and patriarchal. For instance, at 30, a woman may be worried about not having children, or not being in a relationship, and at 70, a woman may still be worried about a relationship to others rather than using her own talents and doing what she loves. Also, if women were paid equally at thirty and beyond, older women, especially women of color, wouldn’t be the poorest group in this country. The gap in poverty rates between women and men in the United States is the highest in the developed world.

5. What is the single biggest thing we have yet to accomplish?

I don’t think any one person can choose that for everyone else.  If each of us knows what we want to accomplish, then we can help each other get there.

Gloria Steinem is a writer, political activist, and feminist organizer. She was a founder of New York and Ms. magazines, and is the author of My Life on the Road, Moving Beyond Words, Revolution from Within, and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, all published in the United States, and in India, As If Women Matter. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Free to Be Foundation, and the Women’s Media Center in the United States.

EVE ENSLER

1. What does this day mean to you?

International Women’s Day was initiated at the 1910 International Socialist Women’s conference to annually honor working women around the world. This day is to cherish, respect and honor the dignity of women workers – farmers, nurses, mothers, restaurant workers, factory workers, domestic workers, teachers, retail workers – and to demand one fair wage, equal pay for equal work, healthcare, and safety on the job free from harassment, poor working conditions and accidents. It’s a day to rise with our sisters in solidarity to make sure those who work the hardest are treated the most fairly.

2. How do you think women should celebrate and/or acknowledge this day?

I don’t think we spend enough time appreciating how much working women give to the world.  On this day I want to honor the nurses who saved my life when I was very sick. I feel gratitude for women who work the fields so I can have food on my table. I see the women working insane hours in factories so we can have the products we need. I celebrate teachers who give their lives to educating children in some of the most difficult situations. I honor domestic workers who take care of children and make so many lives possible. I honor women who meet the elderly on airplanes with wheelchairs. I celebrate women who clean our public bathrooms.  I honor all the mothers who do one of the hardest, most essential unpaid jobs – the day to day caretaking and loving of our children. I honor women working checkout counters at the grocery store and women who drive trucks for Fed Ex and women who deliver our mail.

On this day I rise for better working conditions, for better hours, for better pay, for healthcare for all. I rise to recognize the work of every undocumented working women. May they be honored and safe and given citizenship. I rise so that black women and brown women and Muslim women and trans women and gay women have equal access to work and equal job opportunities and equal pay and that they are never violated or treated with disrespect. I rise to make sure that every working woman is free from sexual abuse and harassment at her job.  The work of women literally holds up our world. It is the most needed and the least respected. Let us recognize it. Let us fight to pay working women what they deserve. Let us rise until all working women are free, respected, safe and honored.

3. What should women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+ know today?

I think the most important lesson I have learned at this point in my life is about the connection between our bodies and our mind and hearts.  I am a survivor of childhood sexual violence, have been in recovery for 43 years, and beat stage 3/4 uterine cancer 10 years ago.  Collectively, over the years, these experiences have forced me to truly inhabit my body.  What I mean by that is that for so long I was running – perhaps from something (my past) or to something (some unattainable future).  I learned that I have to be in my body now, to nurture it, to honor it, to slow down.  I feel more free and alive than I ever have.  I wish I had understood this when I was younger.

4. What is the single biggest thing we as women have yet to accomplish?

We need to dismantle patriarchy.  It is the system that is at the root of all our problems, most notably violence against women and girls and violence against our Mother Earth.

Eve Ensler, Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of “The Vagina Monologues,” translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries. Her latest book, “The Apology,” has sparked a global dialogue. She is the founder of the V-Day and One Billion Rising activist movements to end violence against all women and girls, and is the co-founder of City of Joy, together with activist Christine Schuler Deschryver and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege.