Women's Day

Yesterday was International Women's Day, a day that I would imagine is celebrated all over the world, but I had not paid much attention to before.

Most of Serbia seems to celebrate it like a one-sided Valentine's day. People selling flowers were everywhere.

It's the biggest day on the ZuC calendar.

We protested outside the US embassy to stop the war in Iraq. We delivered a letter to the Russian embassy (closed for the holiday) demanding that they stop supporting Milosevic. We went to a press conference promoting a book about women's experiences of war. We did street theater in the main square. We marched. (I held up half of a banner reading "we want democracy, not theocracy" in local language.) There were workshops on fundamentalism & the future of Kosov@.

And my role in this day of women's liberation was very stereotypically feminine. I was up late the night before sewing - making pocket in our banners to put sticks in. As someone who knows how to sew, I am a rare breed in my office. Only the older women from the smaller towns know how to sew. I baked cookies for our potluck lunch. I spent a lot of time getting people from out-of-town to and from the bus and train stations. I enjoyed all of those tasks & I suppose that's what International Women's Day, feminism, etc. is all about: doing tasks because you want to do them, not because they're expected of you.

And I do like doing them. Getting to sew and bake and walk around the city for work is a good deal in my book.