Advance warning
If someone invites you to an International Women's Day breakfast, eat raw chicken.
Yes, there are less than ten weeks until Christmas. And that’s crazy, because it may mean you squandered 2018. I spent a small fortune going on a solo trip to Madrid in June and realised while sitting solo at a bar eating starters and reading my kindle, that this was not the kind of soul-feeding empowerment I needed. Noughties websites aimed at women in jumpers promised me transformation. Peace with myself. Instead, I got free pity dessert from barmen. Maybe your 2018 was a series of fulfilment. All I know is that in March I was sitting next to a stranger at a bloated and unnecessary work event, and I asked her what year we were in.
Two years ago, I think, I was at the after party of some corporate women’s event in the back room of a venue on Dawson Street. A high-up woman sat next to me and we started chatting about houses. She owned a few. Then we got to talking about the houses Guinness provided staff and I struggled to remember the person I knew living in one. “This is so annoying, I met her this week and can’t remember who she is,” I said. “That’s really worrying,” the property magnate said. “You should be worried at not remembering things.” Our conversation died.
Anyway, I like Christmas. Making it hellish is mostly a choice. The actual calendar standout that gets me Victorian lady faint is International Women’s Day, March 8th. That’s the bucket of leeches.
March is months away. You could form a habit by the time it rolls around. But somewhere in an office this week, there’s a woman who has been asked to help organise her workplace’s International Women’s Day event. And I want to tell her, it’s okay to want to be made redundant in early 2019.
When I was in college I would show up for the week. I played a part in organising lots of things for the day. Panels, exhibitions, magazines. I’m like a travelling salesman with a suitcase full of prototypes. Here’s four women ticking various boxes, and all with their own microphones, forever trapped in a snow globe. Now, International Women’s Day gives me dehydrated brain. One year, I collapsed on the Friday in a music venue on the quays. Full on wilted to the floor and silently wept in the taxi home. I was barely able to sit up and babbled apologies.
This designated day has been UN official since the mid-seventies. Before that, International Women’s Day was rooted in the socialist and communist movements in the early 20th century. Its present incarnation, in the Dublin I experience, doesn’t evoke workers taking back the power. Instead, it’s a breakfast at 7:30 am in a massive company’s events space with plates of croissants. A fruit skewer draped in some orange syrup if you’re really lucky. Female staffers work at registration and there’s a speaker, or a few, who all gather to talk vaguely about being a woman.
That kind of thing is wonderful music to some people. But in the post-Lean In debunking, Me Too era are we really still talking about confidence? If someone says the word imposter syndrome one more time, I’m throwing my shoe at a head of state. If a business wants to make their ladies’ day all about putting on that Zara jacket and killing your annual review, then go the full hog. Don’t bother with the breakfast and booked speaker. Tell your female staff to come in the usual time and have little brown envelopes full of cash waiting on their desks. It can be the croissant money! Or the money you probably owe them. (Publish salaries and pay gaps!) Just be upfront. We reward you for using your time on earth to give us service.