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Celebrating Strong Women on International Women’s Day

Blog, On Writing, What I'm Thinking

Today is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate women and focus on gender parity. Several men I’ve spoken to wonder why there is a need for such a day, especially in 2016, or why they should observe it, since the woman in his life knows she is both appreciated and treasured.

Whoa. This has nothing to do with loving or appreciating the women in our lives. It has to do with women in the workplace being underrepresented in management and underpaid compared to their male counterparts. It has to do with the fact that the most successful companies in the world are those that have less gender bias.

As a writer, I’m often asked why the voices of my female characters are so much stronger and more vibrant than their male counterparts. I like to joke that it must be because I’m in touch with my feminine side, but, in truth, there is more to it than that.

I’ve been blessed to have both strong men and strong women in my life — and the real blessing is their strength of character. Descended from Jews of Eastern European and German origin, I grew up surrounded by the stories of strong, immigrant women holding together families.

I don’t set out to write strong women — they just seem to happen. But perhaps it is the inspiration, the example, of those women from my past that asserts itself as my characters’ lives and personalities take shape.

Or, perhaps, it is that when I write in the voice of a male character, I can’t avoid creating a character that is in some way a reflection of myself. I can’t get out of my own way. By contrast, in trying to describe the world through the eyes of a woman, I am freed from my preconceptions of reality just enough to enable courage that I might respect or aspire to, but could never believe myself to be capable of.

It has been said that men spend their time studying and contemplating the important issues in life, such as how long God really took to create the world. All women have to do is to find a way to make one potato feed a family of twelve.

There is some wry humor in that story, and, perhaps, in past generations, there was also a grain of truth. But the nudged elbow and the winked eye of the storyteller is also an acknowledgement of how essential women were in the struggle for survival.

In our lives today, many of us are well beyond struggling for survival. But women still struggle for parity in the workplace, in academia and elsewhere. And as long as that is the case, the message of International Women’s Day remains powerful and necessary. So today, I challenge you to think not about how to appreciate the women in your life, but rather about what you can do to empower them, to treat them equitably and with respect for their contributions of strength and intellect. To me, that is the true spirit of International Women’s Day.