8th March 2013 London, UK
International Women’s Day 2013
Guest blog by Julia Fenn, the British High Commissioner’s wife, on the importance of International Women’s Day and what this day means to her personally.
I have celebrated International Women’s Day in Brunei for the last three years, though I have to confess that I never particularly marked the date anywhere else before. It is strange how these things happen.
In Spring 2010, I was thinking of inviting some women to the house in thanks for their various kindnesses to me since arriving here and I had fixed the date of 8 March. Just as we were about to send out the invitations, I discovered that it was International Women’s Day. Serendipity.
The next year was the 100th anniversary. So we invited 100 women to celebrate it with us, along with the launching of UN Women on 24 February 2011. The theme of 2012 was ‘Connecting Girls: Inspiring Futures’ so we had fun getting guests to bring along young women, daughters and colleagues who they thought would enjoy meeting each other together with a wide cross-section of women here in all sorts of walks of life. And now it is 8 March 2013…
Different people, and indeed different nations, have their own way of making the day special. Last year I was given a bunch of flowers by the Russian ambassador who told me such a gift was common practice, and that in his country the day is a national holiday.
If you look at the website of International Women’s Day, you will see that there are all sorts of events being held on or around the 8th March from political rallies to get-togethers such as those we have held here. Many countries take different topics to address: the International Women’s Day website has chosen to look at ‘The Gender Agenda’ while the United Nations’ are concentrating upon ‘Action to end Violence against Women’.
As a result, this year the British Government’s initiative is to combat sexual violence in conflict zones around the world – a project Brunei has been supportive of at the UN. On the home front, Britain is updating its action plan to combat Violence Against Women and Girls in the UK, in all its forms – physical and mental: something I know our distinguished Guest of Honour this year, Deputy Minister of Culture Youth and Sport, Datin Adina has been most active to address here in Brunei.
Last year and this, Britain is keen to bring the subject of Women and Economic Growth to the fore as well: to promote equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities for all within the workplace. These aims are in line with those set in the foundation agenda of UN Women, which was welcomed by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a ‘powerful new agent for progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment’.
I am not a Secretary General, nor a diplomat, nor a politician and my only real qualification for discussing this subject at all is that I am, at least, female: an employee, an employer, daughter, sister, wife and mother. And I was brought up to think that I could do anything if I set my mind to it. I can’t, of course, but I guess that is due to my own abilities and application, not my gender.
It is hard to change the world over tea and egg sandwiches, but it seems to me that International Women’s Day is a moment for stopping to think about such things: a day to reflect how far women have travelled but also to remind ourselves that we are not there yet.
We have much to celebrate, but we also have to guard against complacency, especially in places like Britain and Brunei where the going is comparatively good. Both societies are fortunate to have able women active in positions of power who are respected in their own and other societies.
We have an excellent example of Her Royal Highness Princess Hajah Masna (who graced our celebration last year) as Ambassador at Large for her country, while our own Queen last year celebrated her Diamond Jubilee: 60 years working on behalf of Britain.
But the fact remains that even in my own country, our percentage of women in top jobs is still nowhere near the halfway mark. Despite the old Chinese saying, ‘Women hold up half the sky’, we still tend not to get paid as much as the men for our half of the labour. So many young women nowadays claim not to be feminist, meaning that they are rather embarrassed by the bra-burning, dungaree-dressed image of feminists in their mother’s generation and that they, personally, don’t see any problem in wearing high heels and lipstick.
And neither do I. But nor do I think that feminism is an awkward, outmoded word. For surely it can never be out of date until we can honestly say that men and women are treated equally, paid equally, and given equal rights. We ought all to be feminists then, men and women both, bearing our part of the sky equally and side by side, come rain or shine.
But just as we still have some way to go, it is nice to have the opportunity to celebrate the journey already made and the help we have had along the way. All of us have been inspired by others in our lives, male and female: parents, relatives, friends, teachers, someone met in a chance encounter.
This year we have asked our guests to bring along – if they are able – someone who has inspired them. I am really looking forward to hearing some of our guest’s stories and hopefully meeting some of the people who have inspired them too.
If asked for my own ‘inspirational’ guest, then I would have invited one of my supervisors in Art History at Cambridge: Sylvia Stevenson (who sadly died a few years ago). Sylvia was seventy by the time I met her as an undergraduate and her energy was astounding. She went back to university in her late 60’s, after the death of her husband, and did a second degree in History of Art, ending up teaching the likes of me in a wonderfully esoteric and unstuffy way, with verve and enthusiasm.
She would sometimes invite students, artists, Ph.D students, museum curators, friends and Professors to her house for impromptu gatherings which were multi-generational, multi-cultural, and pretty much multi-everything else: a place where as students we realized that grown-ups were not an entirely different species. She was that rare thing in an older person: a great believer in and supporting champion of the young.
My second guest – who is not here either, although happily alive and well and visited very recently – is Pei Fen Koh, the wife of the previous Singaporean High Commissioner to Brunei. A charming and able woman, she inspired me by showing me that I did not have to follow a set script to play my role at the High Commission.
The ‘Ambassador’s wife’ does not have to be the snooty lady in perfect clothes serving ironic Ferrero Rochers. She can also be the scruffy one with the noisy kids or the one who laughs in the wrong places and hasn’t had a manicure recently. That is me, of course, not her – but as wife to a spider expert, she disappears into the jungle for days to help catch his scary specimens with great panache.
It is partly thanks to her that I saw I was allowed to be myself, despite the role, and, partly thanks to her, that I have had such fun here in Brunei.
Happy International Women’s Day!