“What’s the point in celebrating International Women’s Day?” a journalist asked me earlier today. “If there was no point in celebrating International Women’s Day would you be interviewing me?” was my instinctive response. It’s easy to ‘rubbish’ events like International Women’s Day but in my opinion marking such occasions (as well as the other occasions in the women’s rights calendar – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence and World Aids Day for e.g.) are significant because:

• It is a day when women’s rights organisations can collectively organise to celebrate women’s achievements whilst assessing what remains to be done in the struggle for gender equality and social justice.

• Branding days as ‘International Women’s Day’ for e.g. focuses the attention of the public, and the media on issues of concern to women. Because of the occasion I have received a number of unsolicited calls from the media wanting my opinion on everything from female genital mutilation to the justification for International Women’s Day. Under normal circumstances I am the one chasing the media to highlight issues of concern to women but the lead up to this day is one of the few occasions where I find the situation reversed.

• It is a day when feminists and our supporters can celebrate our sisterhood. Yesterday in a twitter exchange my African feminist sister @sheroxlox excitedly said she had a gift for her #Afrifem (#Afrifem is the tag that a number of African feminists have agreed to use as a tag to highlight tweets of interest to other African feminists) sisters on International Women’s Day. I in turn excitedly responded that I also had a gift for my #Afrifem sisters. It may seem a small thing to the wider world but as an African feminist I appreciate having a day where the world chooses to focus attention on the issues that I deal with on a day to day basis.

Happy International Women’s Day

Nana Sekyiamah

Communications Officer, AWDF