Author: Sefer Selimi Jr.
I do not know where is the origin of the misinterpretation of March 8th as Mother’s Day and transfiguration of this day for protest as a celebration with songs and dances in restaurants filled only with women. Perhaps without consciousness and imposed by the local context that attendance in partying is a protest, this tradition is continued by young girls and seems likely to continue for a long time. To be clear, I am not against parties but what does it mean for a holiday that does not celebrate a certain victory, achievement or certain advancement?
Since we are at the time of the election campaign, it would be good to take a look at the overall situation of women’s representation in politics by analyzing the picture of their public activity but without numbers because it would be very desperate.
It is enough to start and analyze the pictures of the electoral activity of the political parties and we will be gobbled up by the accumulation of so much testosterone in one place. Men of all calibers, with a tie and a hat on their heads, laughing or grunting, doctors and farmers, entrepreneurs and ordinary salesmen but what you can’t find are women of any kind.
To break the monotony, some of the politicians with a little sense of PR publishes a photo of a casual conversation with a local woman stopped in the street, perhaps to scold or ask for a job for her son, because there also, the girl has no priority – she belongs to someone else’s door. The reality of this situation is clear, with women you do not have to talk because men vote for them. To this entire picture, you can also stick the upcoming picture of the voting day when on the way to the voting box it is repeated to her for the last time which number she should circle, if he does not vote instead of his wife.
However, things have moved a little further and the political parties have somehow started flirting with the romantic idea of greater involvement of women in politics. Slightly imposed by legal quotas for their inclusion on the electoral rolls and little by the constant public pressure, the warnings are that the number of their representation, at least on the electoral rolls, will increase. However, how much really is their weight in political decision making?
It is enough to try to remember a particular name that represented the party’s policies in public debates, especially in those debates that take place in the media where both the public and the impact are greater. Unfortunately, rarely can you remembers that somewhere in a debate show, a woman who defends her party’s attitudes, especially on serious and sensitive topics. This brings me to the conclusion that political parties, especially those with the Albanian prefix but not only those, operate guided by the mentality that big jobs are for men.
Great jobs are for men that is why women are divided into separate rooms – women’s forums or associations where they can have fun talking about everything else but not take radical steps to advance their position because if they did it there wouldn’t be women’s forum but they would be represented, even by leading many of the party bodies.
It would be of interest to do a ‘family photo’ with the leaders of the most important political positions in the governing structure to see the true reflection of our society, a masculine society who use women only as a decor and for symbolism.
The reality is sad but it must be said, otherwise we will be held hostage to this medieval mentality where the public is dominated by muscles rather than intellects, by physical force rather than mental capacity. The war for gender equality is not a war for feminine décor, nor is it a war for the favor of a part of society but it is a multidimensional struggle for equal opportunities, for professional meritocracy. Therefore, instead of a celebration, there should be a protest that should not be preceded by women but by all of us who want to be a normal state, with a normal society.