I am amused to encounter the number of occasions on which female acquaintances announce proudly that today is International Women’s Day, sometimes with an implied agenda, “I bet you didn’t know that, did you?” As it happens, I think that I probably celebrated the day for the first time in about 1970. By that time I had become involved in the academic study of Yugoslavia, and as a side-effect of that had become an active member of the British-Yugoslav Society. “Dan Zhena” was a regular feature of the society’s activities.
Things have changed in some respects, however. Certainly in South Slav circles the day was the occasion for remarks about the fact that “Women’s Day” was the only day on which women were given any recognition, and husbands and bosses at work make an elaborate and self-congratulatory show of celebrating women. I am sure that there is a long way to go before equality of the sexes can be affirmed as a fact rather than an aspiration. This is one of those occasions when it is possible to make a choice between celebrating the glass half-full or the glass half-empty. My own inclination today, remembering the length of time over which I have been celebrating the occasion, is to ask for at least one cheer for the progress that has been made in female emancipation.
I do hope that nobody is going to reply with the comment that “you would say that, wouldn’t you.”.