FLAT 50% OFF ON WOMEN’S DAY!

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*ding* *ding* (2 new notifications)

“Hello beautiful! We at xyz wish you a very happy women’s day. Click here to avail exciting offers on beauty products. OFFER VALID ONLY FOR TODAY.”

“You are unstoppable, you are fierce, and all about that sass. This Women’s day choose glam, choose style. Redeem code GIRLPOWR01 to win prizes.”

 

Some of us woke up to these notifications a few days ago. It was 8th of March and International Women’s Day!

In 1908, as many as 15,000 working women took to the streets of New York City, demanding less working hours, wage parity and voting rights. In the following year, the Socialist Party of America had declared February 28th as America’s National Women’s Day. And inspired by the same, Clara Zetkin (member of Socialist Democratic Party of Germany) pitched in the proposal of observing International Women’s day, at International Conference of Working Women (Denmark).

On March 9th 1911, countries like Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland celebrated the first International Working Women’s Day. Not more than a week later, an appalling fire accident at New York’s Shirtwaist Factory drew the due attention towards the working conditions of workers and factory labors. Concurrently, the Russian working women organized a strike for “Bread and Peace” condemning the WW I and seeking global solidarity for the same. And since 1975, the United Nations is celebrating the Eight of March as the International Women’s Day. (The omission of ‘working’ is indicative of its neoliberal fantasies!)

Now that we have a sketch in mind about the history of international women’s day, let us go back to those notifications!

What is wrong with offers and discounts? Honestly, nothing. It is the commodification of women’s rights, commercialization of their struggle and money making off the petty tokenistic PR stunts.

Various brands and/or corporations play competitive in earning brownie points by advertising through cheap ways of appropriating movements and their ethos. Whether it is about using rainbow flags and queer art during the month of June or selling T-shirts with ‘GRL PWR’ prints, corporate firms comfortably misappropriate identities and years of struggle while they sprawl across the comforts of cozy capitalism.

While these brands are dubious in their “wokeness”, they also fail to cater to the demands of workers employed by them. To mass produce ‘Girl up’ t-shirts with white washed Frida Kahlo illustrations- it requires the firm to compromise fair wages, reasonable working hours and quality of working conditions, it seems.

(Read more, H&M accused of failing to ensure fair wages for global factory workers-https://www.reuters.com/article/us-workers-garment-abuse/hm-accused-of-failing-to-ensure-fair-wages-for-global-factory-workers-idUSKCN1M41GR)

Now that we are headed towards an apparatus for crony capitalism, the nightmarish neoliberalism keeps rebranding itself into something popular and acceptable to “woke” culture. It does not contribute an iota to the efforts of bringing about social justice through Women’s liberation and is unapologetic about the systematic erasure of history of struggle and origin. The intersectionality of feminism is compromised under its pretentious model of “women empowerment”.

It is high time to popularize the mass feminist mobilization which promises socio-economic justice and gender justice, and reject the ostentatious commodity driven paradigm.

To conclude, I quote- “Feminism, for decades of neoliberalism, has been a feminism of the Hillary Clintons and the Sheryl Sandbergs, which is basically breaking the glass ceiling while the vast majority of women are in the basement cleaning up the glass.” (Tithi Bhattacharya)

References: 

1.     Arruzza, Cinzia., Bhattacharya, Tithi., & Fraser, Nancy. (2019) Feminism for the 99 Percent: A Manifesto. Verso. London, New York.

2.     https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/8/commodifying-womens-rights

3.     https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/27/we-need-a-feminism-for-the-99-thats-why-women-will-strike-this-year

4.     https://www.thoughtco.com/international-womens-day-3529400


Author:

Purvai Dwivedi
3rd Year, History Hons. KMC

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