Softer Voices…

Each year, I’ve written something on International Women’s Day, because I cannot divide the beauty in my own life from the women who have made it so.

The greatest blessings of my life are my mother, sister and female friends. I would have nothing, if not for their unique, feminine love. This love has revealed to me the insatiable, longsuffering love of God. And it is insatiable.

I’ve written about the magnificence of female friendship and the unsurpassable crown of motherhood. I was reminded last year, however, that IWD exists to celebrate the achievements of women while confronting unequal opportunity, marginalisation, and disregard for women’s dignity, rights, and contributions. I could not agree more. The disproportionate statistics of poverty, injustice, and violence, affecting women, is heartbreaking. So this year, I want to focus on this.

My first observation: have we unwittingly moved away from this? Often today, only louder, more ‘influential’ voices are heard; while most young women, the elderly, the less-fortunate, and those not seen to advance any helpful, current cause, are in a silenced category. Today, these voices shouldn’t be silenced, but amplified.

IWD should inspire us to address the core of what is causing the barriers and bias that create inequality. We can all put on a ribbon, paint a nail, and attend a talk on March 8, but to hear only about the underrepresentation of women on boards and in executive roles does not consider the whole picture, and ultimately, to my mind, deserts ‘those others’ for whom this day too exists. Corporate achievements are great, but they can never be the rule, measure or focus of equality. And never are they the mark of a woman’s value.

We see it locally, federally, and globally, sectors and groups habitually focusing on select women’s issues, while remaining silent and nowhere to be seen on what most would consider glaringly obvious injustices. We’ve seen how damaging this is, and how such a modus operandi never works. Among many possible examples, consider the experience of the Church. Credibility is lost when it is silent on difficult issues of injustice and wrongdoing, yet boisterous on others. It is no different in the plight for women’s equality.

Can one be outraged on ‘issues impacting women’, yet shockingly silent and even tame on the graphic massacres of women and children in wars and terror attacks? Women taken, sexually violated, tortured and executed.  Shiri Bibas and her two children – aged just 4 years and 9 months old – are those who most recently come to mind. Where are the ‘powerful’ feminine voices on October 7? Where is the ‘action’? Where is our outrage for the women (and children) murdered, or anger at the ongoing plight of innocent Palestinian women (and children) now victims too? And what about the many unknown? This is just one example.

Women’s equality, right to opportunity and dignity does not begin, nor should it have parameters determined by race, social status, gender quotas, political bent, religion, and what are considered positions of power. But sadly… it does. And we encourage it to be so.

It is not feminism to take one side… it is politics, unfair, weak, sterile, and not of God. Jesus Himself taught us this.

Ironically, IWD 2025 has the theme “March Forward: For ALL Women and Girls”; 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a bold vision for gender equality. It sounds great – but evidently we still march (when advantageous), for some, not all. And to reduce a centuries-long struggle for equality to a pithy phrase or gathering is not enough.

We must listen to softer, silent, broken voices too. Voices shunned. Those who have no ‘platform’ upon which to be heard. Those who can’t organise rallies or breakfasts. Pope Francis has continually emphasised and focused on why we have the need of such a day in the first place. A faux pro-women ‘movement’ is overwhelmingly underwhelming.

The Church is the place to change this narrative. Equality is not found in eliminating uniqueness, nor pitting femininity against masculinity. We’ve tried that over the last 70 or so years, and it does not work.

To say that to be respected we must lay aside what makes a woman unique is simply a continuation of what we want to eradicate.

We must first look at the irreplaceable truth of womanhood – not defined by what she can do or achieve, nor race or religion, but by her identity as God’s daughter. Unless we begin here, we will always fall short. We get it wrong, because our place of departure is wrong – often unwittingly focusing upon what has no power to effect lasting change.

Real feminism is the right to be seen as equal to, but distinctive from. It celebrates and respects not only what men and women can do but also their strengths, which are exclusive and admirable to each other. This is what must be allowed to flourish. For women, this includes the gift of bringing new life into the world (biologically and spiritually) and personifying a divine-like love and hope, in a way that men simply cannot.

Otherwise, the W in IWD is merely incidental. Women don’t just need to be ‘talked-up’ for one day. A true honoring of women recognises her unique vocation and gives thanks for how she receives love to return love. “In God’s eternal plan, woman is the one in whom love first takes root,” John Paul II wrote in Mulieris Dignitatem (1988). And it really is love that keeps the world turning. This is something worth celebrating.

Pope Francis goes further to recognise the feminine dimension of the Church. ‘The Church is woman’ he repeats. Why? Because there is nothing more beautiful and alive than femininity. There is something beautiful to be offered.

What is femininity? Receptivity. Not hardness, but welcoming and nurturing life. This is not ‘weak’, but powerful! After all, women are the possibility of life and creativity. For this reason ‘the Church is woman,’ the Pope says, ‘and if we cannot understand what a woman is, what the theology of women is, we will never understand the Church. One of the great sins we have witnessed is ‘masculinizing’ the Church.’

Is our vision, our focus, secular or supernatural? Because if merely the first, what we are experiencing in our struggle for ‘equality’, will never change. The achievements we pour so much into exhibiting are wonderful! But they are not the beginning, they follow and flourish after we get the basics right.

I write this for women who are overlooked. Women too busy keeping life afloat, to participate in breakfasts and movements. For women who sit on the floor day after day playing with their baby, feeling that their life offers nothing to the world. It means everything! Women struggling to feed their children each night, and so themselves going hungry. For women suffering post-natal depression and those alone and unloved. For hard-working and professional women, exhausted and overwhelmed, so much is taken, and no give. For women abused and belittled. Women trafficked and held captive. The girls whose fathers simply walked out. And single mothers raising children alone. For those with marriages that never worked out, and those who say ‘it was never meant to be this hard.’ I write for women living in cars and hiding tears at the job they feel they’re barely holding onto. I have seen all of these. These are the women who need the immediate action. These too, are the women this day must celebrate and support.

For women facing a culture that says unless you have a ‘career,’ you’re not worth much. Before anything else, it is you, not what you do or achieve, that reveals your value. This is what Christ taught, may we too.

My mum never had a ‘career’. She was ‘just’ a mum – and to my mind, the most successful, inspiring woman who ever walked the earth. Funnily enough… the same can be said of God’s own mother, too!

Happy International Women’s Day.