As the challenges for the gender rights movements are changing, March 8th - The International Women’s Day - is celebrated in new ways in Norway.
3/7/2008 :: March 8th was launched as the International Women’s Day in 1911 in Copenhagen, Denmark. It has often been marked with a parade - in 1978, 20.000 women and men marched in Norway. But in the last years, there has been a call for something else – a more updated version of the celebration of the women’s right movement.
Ladyfest offers this. It was first held in Olympia, USA, in 2000. March has been declared Women’s History Month in the U.S. by the Congress, and there are still several similar U.S. initiatives, although they may not be as closely linked to March 8th as Ladyfest is in Norway. In Norway, Ladyfest is getting bigger each year, and it is one of several groups that are drawing attention to gender politics and the International Women’s Day in a new way.
The festival offers a chance to celebrate The International Women’s Day for one whole week, gathering forces from a broad spectrum of female artists and other contributors. They call attention to feminism and equal rights, with creative workshops, concerts and club concepts, release party for the feminist magazine “Fett”, documentaries and debates, literary evening, festival radio. And of course, at March 8th there will be the traditional parade. Ladyfest underlines that feminism today is a way of thinking more than a gathered ideology. That is why it is important to encourage cooperation that goes across cultural and political divides.
The Norwegian Gender Equality Act of 1978 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender in all areas of society, and the Government gives high priority to gender equality issues. Participation of women in the workforce is very high, and women actually outnumber men in the higher education institutions.
That is not to say there is nothing more to improve. In the later years, there has been a lot of focus on recruiting more women to Company Boards, on the changing male gender roles, on the sexualization of the media and the situation for women who are victims in trafficking. The women rights movement is also quite closely interrelated to the gay/lesbian and queer movement.
The International Women's Day is a day to remember and acknowledge these and many other important issues, but it is also a day to celebrate the positive changes that have taken place the last hundred years. So, happy Women's Day!
Silje Bekeng / The Royal Norwegian Consulate General