Celebrating womanhood

Happy Celebrating Womanhood day!

Hosted by Living, Learning, and Loving Life, Cabin Goddess, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave, Tea With Dee, and alchemyofscrawl

Thinking what to write on the theme of ‘womanhood’, my mind flickered to strong or inspirational women through the ages, and the first names that came to mind were these: Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Boudica, Queen Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, Marie Curie, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes, Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, Aung San Suu Kyi, Tawakel Karman, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood.

There are so many amazing women who could join this list. In particular, I admire the Suffragettes for their painful fight to bring us equality (British women over 30 could vote in 1918 and gained equal standing in 1928/American women won the vote in 1920), Aung San Suu Kyi for her endless fight for justice and freedom, Marie Curie for her discoveries and for being the first woman to win the Nobel Prize (twice), and Margaret Atwood for her powerful books about the female condition, particularly The Handmaiden’s Tale.

Women played a huge role in both World Wars, entering the military forces and engineering, performing unpaid work at home, and taking up roles that had traditionally been reserved for men. However, today we still do not have equality around the world and some women do not have the human rights that should be everyone’s birthright.

Looking at The Women’s Economic Opportunity Index (2010), we still have a way to go. Women, on average, earn 75% of their male co-workers’ wages. In some developing countries, women cannot vote, own property or walk outside the home without a male family member. An estimated 16% of the world’s adult population lack basic literacy skills and about two-thirds of these are women. In adulthood, women more often than men face the triple burden of work, household chores and child/family care responsibilities. In many societies mothers face a stigma if they leave their children to go to work. In eight countries, women do not have property ownership rights ­- Cameroon, Chad, Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Togo and Zambia. A few governments even have laws that stop women leaving their homes or country without the permission of a male relative or guardian (this restricts a woman’s ability to get a passport). These countries include Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.

So, although not every woman has equality yet, I’d like to think that one day we will get there. We have many positive and powerful role models that the younger generation can look up to. Yay to women! :)

Below are a handful of poems that I wrote in the past with a woman at the centre.



Some day

Some distant day she’ll

Return when she sees beauty

In a rainbow sing

Hey little girl

Hey little girl

Where are you going?

Before you fade

Into the dark

Wander into the yellow light

Flick your hair

Jump into the sea

Running leap of sheer faith

Cut the surf at a run

Feel its cascade

Into the depths of the sea

Keep the spark

Stay shining

In the heat of the sun

Summer daze

Trivial gaze

Lazy haze

Stay awhile and turn your head

Keep smiling

Before it fades

With the waves

Trickling into the shapes

Of feet in the sand

Rain

She sits and dreams of making rain

In the dark, shadows dancing mimic

Colours of the aghast

Sights and sounds and murmurs

Still breathing

Watching over the edge

Of everything

The glass splinters into a million shapes

Cast in a myriad of lights

Bright and sparkling, dancing

In the spring sun

And she dreams of making rain

That tears and crashes

Washing away the shards of glass

Splattering the colours rent

With droplets of ice-cold nothing

Cuts and caresses

Shards of grass peeking through

Clouds gathering

Dust

Shine

She makes music

In the silence

Feels it shine

In the still

Wakes the muse

In the night

Wanders free

The pseudonym

Dreamers

She lives among the dragons, stars and unicorns

The fairytale world born in her wildest dreams

Of childhood wandering on the darkest nights

Beneath the chill of the star speckled moon

In the dark the dragons shine their fiery red

In the light the unicorn bows it silvery head

She dreams the dreams she yearns to live

Ascending the high, jagged mountain reaches

Descending the bleakest, deepest chasms

She rides the unicorn, outpacing green forests

Dead set distancing the thickset woods, screams

The day, the light, the shake of morning dew

Lifted on breezes the silent wails of the dreamer

Spinning on tiptoes across the surface of a lake

Never crack the mirrors in this lingering escape

Take the dreamer in one hand, bend to fate

Where she dances in a stream of starlit skies

Never wandering from the bending, stony path

In the dark the dragons shine their fiery red

In the light the unicorn bows it silvery head

Darkest eyes penetrate the watching innocence

Of the dreamer floating through the skies

Never falling, always flying, asleep, suspended

Travelling in this mystic world so shimmering