On International Women’s Day, these are the women I admire the most 

I was recently interviewed by local media for a special International Women’s Day segment, and among other questions I was asked: “Who are some women you admire?” 

What should I say? My mind raced through the possibilities. I mentally scrolled through lists of prominent women here in the province: in the labour movement, in journalism, writers, artists. I thought of women activists I knew, and women activists I had never met but whose stories inspire me. I thought of women in my own life, friends who have inspired me and helped make my own life more livable. 

I wasn’t sure how to respond, and I felt hesitant to exalt one or two women over the many others who inspire me as well. I can’t remember what I said, but it was probably broad and general and vague in the way a good reporter usually hates. 

It was only later, leaving the studio and heading home, that I realized how I should have responded to the question. Free from the glare of studio lights and cameras, I reflected on the question, and I thought long and hard about the women whose struggles truly move my heart. I reflected on all the women I know, and whose faces come most quickly to mind. 

The women who inspire 

In most of the large offices where I have worked, there is a woman (often several) who sit quietly at their desk doing their work. They’re not the extroverted ones; and at first I wonder to myself whether they’re unfriendly or dislike me. But no — I catch the occasional shy smile. They’re always polite. But they’re largely ignored. If and when I get to know them, and if they trust me enough to tell me their story, I learn it wasn’t always like this. They used to joke and laugh and banter like everyone else. But inevitably they had some confrontation with the powers that be, with the men or the popular workers (the men), or their supervisors (also men) but also, not always the men, because patriarchy and power and privilege always adapts. They might have wound up disciplined, and they certainly wound up ostracized. Maybe they fought it; maybe that made it worse. Somehow, they kept their job, and now they do that job quietly, sitting in the corner, watching the new employees banter and laugh until they too run afoul of the powerful men in that office. 

I think of the other women no one talks to in the office, because everyone knows the bosses don’t really like them for no obvious reason — perhaps because she’s a woman, perhaps because she’s a loud woman, perhaps because she’s a quiet woman, perhaps because she’s a Black woman, perhaps because she’s a queer woman, perhaps because she’s an honest woman. Perhaps because they can’t quite figure out what kind of woman she is, or whether she’s a woman at all. But whatever the case, because she’s a woman. I thought of the quiet perseverance it takes to come to work when the bosses don’t like you and when everyone is afraid to talk to you lest they be tainted by your unpopularity. 

I thought of the woman in the office who said “no” one day when her boss asked her to come in on the weekend and help work through a backlog. Ever since then she is given the worst assignments. She is criticized for the quality of her work, which has not changed. But she still comes to work. 

I think of the woman who learned about trauma-informed, feminist methods of conflict resolution and decided to try them one day in the office when her male supervisor was acting unfairly toward other women there. She explained why his behaviour was wrong. He listened, he argued, he left angrily. Now he gives her the cold shoulder, the worst assignments, the obnoxious smirk when she shares her work. But still she comes to work. 

I think of the Black woman who works in the building next to mine, who always spares me a nice smile. She knows that both of the white men with offices on either side of her and the white woman with an office across the hall — the ones who smile politely to her face and listen respectfully to her during meetings — sometimes meet without her, roll their eyes about her work, then talk about how they can minimize having meetings with her and approve as few of her proposals as possible because they don’t fit the culture of the office — and neither, really, does she. Yet she shows up to work every day, walks past their offices, smiles in greeting, and continues writing her proposals and sharing them. She knows that every idea she proposes sparks a dozen whispered conversations—many of them about her—and yet she still proposes them, because if even one of them sticks it might help those who follow in her footsteps. 

I thought of a co-worker of mine who tried bringing up the topic of sexism in our office with male co-workers and supervisors, and in response faced retaliation, false accusations and a toxic workplace from those very same men, making every day even more difficult and toxic than the ones that preceded it. I thought of how those men’s friends—avowed feminists—rallied to support them, further bullying the few employees who actually tried injecting feminist and restorative justice principles into the workplace. 

I thought of the woman from whom I buy coffee every morning, who shows up to work every day, even when she’s sick—frequently, because her employer provides no protective gear—and the way her hands are bandaged from workplace injury and strain, the visible strain on her face from bending and standing for long full-day shifts, the way she once properly gendered me in a comment to a co-worker, unprompted and unexpected, even while the institution in which we both work spent two years fighting my requests for updated personal data before I completed a legal name and gender marker change. 

I think of all the campus and workplace sexual harassment advisors who have been fired or laid off or made redundant because they did their jobs too well and drew too much attention to the scourge of sexual violence in our society. I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of sexual harassment advisors I know in this country who have lost their jobs because they did them too well, because they rendered visible a problem that men and those in power did not really want to face. 

I think of the Indigenous women I know who have conducted their community work under police surveillance, who have been harassed with anonymous phone calls threatening their jobs, whose government-appointed male bosses grow impatient when they bring up the word decolonization. I think about how many of them are on stress leave from work, on permanent disability. There is a pattern that follows their trajectory in the workplace. First, their hiring is celebrated, then they are quietly reminded what to say or not to say, what to propose and not to propose. If they ignore those unspoken rules, they stop being invited to meetings and included in conversations. Awkward silences pursue them around the office. Co-workers, sensing blood, begin averting their eyes. Then it’s an endurance race as to who will buckle first — whether the employee will go on stress leave or quit before the employer finds a plausible excuse to fire them. I think of those women, piecing together their lives after one or the other of these equally painful outcomes. 

I think of the woman who’s a tech whiz and constantly called in to save her employer’s systems and websites from disaster, and how she had the temerity to remind her employer how much overtime pay they owed her. I think of how a few weeks later her employer called her in and let her go because they realized how reliant they were on an intelligent woman and this knowledge frightened them. 

I think of the queer elders I know: the women who were pushed out of jobs or academia, the activists who fell prey to the inevitable backbiting and infighting of nonprofit organizations, whose vision of solidarity was shattered by men or by bigotry, or by jealousy or by impatience, or by misunderstanding or by all of these things. I think of them quietly eking out the remainder of their years on the poverty line, in a small downtown apartment or a quiet run-down house around the bay, staring out the window, dreaming dreams lined with bitterness. And I think of how they smile at the children playing in the street, how they laugh at their neighbours’ jokes as they hang up their laundry, how they offer freshly-baked bread to the new family that moved in up the road. I think how much effort each of those offers, and those smiles and those laughs, must cost them. 

I think of the grad student excited to start her program, who wore lipstick and a stylish mini-skirt to her first seminar class, and who was shunned and ostracized thereafter for her overt display of femininity in an academic discipline defined by either smart pantsuits or grungy oversized t-shirts. I think of how it derailed a promising academic career that could have contributed so much if only her professors and fellow students hadn’t become fixated by the lipstick and the hairspray. 

I think of another grad student I knew—an international student from Kenya—whose classmates gleefully ran their hands through her dreadlocks on the first day of classes, gushing about how beautiful they were. She complained to the professor, who asked her to chill out because they meant no harm. She decided not to chill out, because the professor’s book said we should not chill out and we should take these things seriously. She filed a complaint against him and the rest of them, and after the silent treatment and poor grades—and an inscrutable bureaucratic complaints process that never appeared to go anywhere—she returned home less than a year into her program. 

I have worked with all of these women, although it must also be said that not all of them are women any more, and some of them never were. But that is beside the point. Those who fight for change in this country do not have an easy struggle. But there are compensations for the difficulties when either you or your struggles are somehow palatable enough to win awards, when you are celebrated at events, when your struggle is showcased on the evening news. You gain self-confidence, a sense of well-being, additional security against the predatory men you confront. 

But the true ones who deserve credit are those whose struggles or identities are not palatable enough to win awards and recognition. The ones we never hear about at awards galas, at IWD breakfasts, whose names are unknown to us and whose only presence in our lives comes from their silent, stolid perseverance in our workplaces or our communities. The ones whose stories we do not know, who struggle on their own, whose struggles are simply for survival or dignity or self-respect. The ones who might not even know why they struggle, other than the fact it is the only way to go on. 

And because it must be said again: some of these folks are not even women. The pain and punishment of patriarchy descends equally on those who are non-binary, agender, and gender-diverse — on those who may once have been women but are no longer, who may now be women but no one around them yet knows it. The struggles we honour on IWD are not just those of women, but of all those who struggle against patriarchy in all of its insidious forms. 

So on IWD let’s not just clap for the women whose struggles or privileges have led them to leadership positions and to celebratory breakfasts and events. Let’s remember to spare our time and our words and our kindness for those who receive no celebration or galas, no awards or public honours, but whose struggles and whose presence in our workplaces and communities is the true measure of our collective fight against patriarchy and oppression.   

They are the ones who inspire me the most.