Author -
Elisaveta Belobradova -
Image -
Malika Sqalli -
Today is not the day of the mother, nor is it the day of hyacinth. It's so much better than that. Today we celebrate the fact that there are societies in which women have equal rights with men.
I’m lucky to live in such a society, regardless of any of its other caveats.
Freedom, Sancho ... It’s best thing. The freedom to learn, to graduate from university, to work until you’re faint, while your husband looks after the kids. The freedom to drive a car
(as well as I can, in my case), to get drunk in a bar or to become a porn star if you will, because your body is your own. The freedom not to get married or not to have children, the freedom to choose. To chose… To be literate, to defend oneself in a court of justice or to be a judge, or an entrepreneur; to go make-up free and to be able to say it when you get your period; to give birth while your husband holds your hand. To fall in love with another woman, to have an abortion, to earn a living or to drive a Mercedes because you’ve got a rich lover; to chose to be a surgeon or an archaeologist …
Freedom is not to like the 8 March, because you remember communism, the hyacinths and how society rip your mother apart with work, while at home the family’s patriarch carelessly threw his socks on the floor that she relentlessly cleaned.
If you are celebrating, pour yourselves a glass of wine to mark being normal people, with rights and with obligations. Because only a 1000 kilometres away from here things are quite different.
Credits:
Text by Elisaveta Belobradova, founder of Maiko Mila, a Bulgarian parenting website
Artwork by Malika Sqalli, Optimism Series
