Do they have International Women’s day in the United States?

Short answer: since it’s international- yes.

March 8 is the international women’s day- some people in the US know it- some don’t. It’s okay if you don’t. But, if you’re here in Burkina Faso and you don’t know what the day is then you’ve probably been living under a rock.

In Burkina Faso- International Women’s Day is celebrated as a national holiday- and men are supposed to be nice to their wives (but in a more meaningful way than Valentines Day).  Some villages hold soccer tournaments, some villages have ceremonies, some villages do other women oriented things. Poa, being the progressive village it is celebrated the day by everyone taking it off and just hanging it out. The CSPS went on “guard only” mode (where the person who handles all cases between 1700-700 works).  I learned some moore and culturally exchanged (or played a game that’s something like checkers).

I also said hi to every woman I saw by saying “ne-y taabo” (bon fete or happy international womens day). Everyone was most appreciative of this. Also, as a little gift all the men of the CSPS gave all the women some money so they could go out and enjoy themselves a bit.

As we were all sitting together- talk turned to a recent push to have law that says that 30% of the legislature of Burkina Faso must be comprised of women. All of the women were, for this measure, and it led to a rather interesting discussion about the merits of democracy and the implications if you mandate something. The women were actually incredibly surprised to hear that I wasn’t in support of it- despite the fact that my opinion literally counts for nothing. My point was that when you start mandating that a representative democracy be made up of a certain percentage of the population- it removes the right of the people to choose and therefore the democracy itself means less. My point was that people should be elected based on merit, what they want to accomplish, and their ability to actually achieve what they accomplish. I honestly don’t think my gender is influencing my views in any way, shape, or form in this case.

But, it’s interesting to see how the gender barrier and glass ceiling effect are at play in Burkina Faso, or at least how they’re perceived to come into play.

After I had this conversation I spoke to a few people and asked about women’s bids for political seats and about the platforms they ran on- and I learned a lot that it was about what women could do for women. Of course that wasn’t all they promised, but it was a recurring theme. My response was thus: you can’t win the support of 100% of the population by only appealing to 50% of it. They found it hard to ignore the logic in my reasoning.

Anyway, I don’t mean to talk about politics or the power differentials between men and women in Burkina Faso because if you ask 100 people you’ll get 100 different answers. I’ve heard stereotypes- and seen them disproved 5 minutes later. But, I do want to talk about the effectiveness of International Women’s Day and how it highlighted the issues between genders and led to an open discussion about them- where both sides of the coin could voice their thoughts and hear the other side.