There are dates that should always be remembered, and one as recent as International Women’s Day should not be swallowed by routine. With time and history, we are asked to inherit something: the care and courage of those who have already paved the path we walk on. On this date, we should above all rekindle our memory and ask ourselves: what has truly changed in our lives?
Women had to fight to be recognized as citizens in a society that would not exist without them. In Portugal, names such as Ana de Castro Osório, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the "Three Marias" and worldwide, figures like Simone de Beauvoir, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Angela Davis, remind us that rights that now seem obvious were once unthinkable for women.
Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was prevented from voting, despite meeting all the legal criteria to do so. Why? Because she was born a woman in the early 20th century. She had to prove in court that she had as much right as any man to exercise this political act, something never questioned when the voter was he, not she.
Feminist activists such as Emmeline Pankhurst were portrayed as hysterical, unrespectable, and deviant from the norm and “good manners” for taking to the streets, organizing protests, and challenging the established order in pursuit of equal treatment. Many of these women remain represented in history only because they accepted being seen as radicals — “too much” for the standards of their time — because otherwise they would have been erased from history, as so many others have been over the centuries.
Must we challenge our femininity to be taken more seriously? We’ve been taught that being feminine means being gentle, restrained, pleasant. Then we are confronted with the opposite, if we are too delicate, our opinions aren’t taken seriously; if we raise our voices, we risk being called hysterical. To what extent is our experience in society dictated by what is acceptable, rather than by who we truly are?
How can we maintain our womanhood when we are still fighting for equality? We believe the very notion of choice is flawed: we should not have to give up our style, our sensibility, our bodies to be seen as competent. We don’t need to wear a neutral version of ourselves: colorless, without jewelry, without personality, to fit into the spaces we already have the right to belong to and occupy.
One gentle reminder that here at CINCO we celebrate womanhood every day, not only on March 8th, not only when the topic is in the spotlight. We celebrate the historical strength that brought us here, the contradictions of the present, and the hope for a future where no woman has to choose between being herself and being taken seriously.