March 8th is International Women’s Day, a day where folks around the world celebrate women’s achievements while also recognizing the challenges women and girls face at home and abroad.
In 1995 (the same year I graduated high school and set off to follow my childhood dream to become a world surfing champion), 189 government representatives converged on Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women to sign the historic Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
The Beijing Declaration sets a roadmap for realizing women’s rights:
“The Beijing Platform for Action focuses on 12 critical areas of concern, and envisions a world where each woman and girl can exercise her choices, such as participating in politics, getting an education, having an income, and living in societies free from violence and discrimination.” (source)
20 years later, the idea put forth in the Beijing Declaration’s Mission Statement that “[e]quality between women and men is a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and is also a necessary and fundamental prerequisite for equality, development and peace” continues to be a salient, powerful, and necessary message.
It may seem strange to some that surfing might play a role in such lofty goals, but as a border-crossing, fluid, diverse tribe of ocean-centric beings, perhaps it is not too hard to imagine greater possibilities for this activity that has been a central connecting medium for us, despite language, geography, luxury, sexuality, color, and creed.
Can surfing be a “creative medium for positive social change?” Perhaps not without complication and contradiction, but as female surfers of the Global North move forward in this direction (as we most assuredly are), surely we can learn to hold these (our) contradictions in mind and in heart, understanding that there is a complicated road ahead between cultural relativism and cultural superiority, and that it is a deeply connected community of diverse women that will facilitate each step of this journey, both for the shifts that continue to be necessary in the Global North and the shifts that are needed internationally for women and girls.
The United Nations’ 2015 theme for the celebration of International Women’s Day is “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!” I want this picture to include surfing.
On March 8th, Easkey Britton and I are taking up the gauntlet, imagining the possibilities, and we want you to join the conversation. We have a night of live music, film, surf art, and local brew planned for you.
We will be showing Easkey and Marion Poizeau’s film Into the Sea, which documents Easkey’s surf trip to Iran where women who want to surf experience unique, but strangely familiar challenges. We will also be showing the film FLUX, which highlights challenges most women in the Global North are intimately familiar with. Where do these films overlap? And how can folks from such different cultures learn to help each other through a shared enjoyment of surfing to achieve equality, dignity, and political empowerment when we occupy such diverse social, economic, and political locations?
The night will be thought-provoking, creative, and fun… hope to see you there!
Get your tickets here: TII+WOF International Women’s Day Event.
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