Courtney Martin argues that we have a moral obligation to focus on international women’s uplift, but that we must also act locally:
In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, Jessica Valenti writes about American women’s tendency to look far across the oceans to get their pity fix while ignoring the sexism that still pervades our very own communities, classrooms, and workplaces. “We’re suffering under the mass delusion that women in America have achieved equality,” Valenti writes, arguing that we fall into this trap because it’s a “feel-good illusion.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a day on which that illusion is more prominent than today — International Women’s Day. What began as a socialist political event has evolved into a global reckoning with the work still to be done to empower women — economically and otherwise. The United Nations’ designated theme this year is “equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all.”
