Staying Home for Int’l Women’s Day? Here Are Better Options

With a theme of “Be Bold for Change,” the 2017 International Women’s Day is being celebrated today — Wednesday. “Call on the masses or call on yourself to help forge a better working world — a more gender inclusive world,” the event’s 2017 website states.

Participants are supposed to accomplish this by staying home from work, shopping at only women-owned or or minority-owned businesses, and wearing red — to show solidarity with equal rights concerns.

Make an appointment to see your daughter’s school administrators — and get to know her teachers.

The other mission? Just to have fun. “Each year International Women’s Day sees thousands of events — global gatherings, conferences, awards, exhibitions, festivals, fun runs, corporate events, concert performances, speaking events, online digital gatherings and more,” says the event’s website.

Related: A Day Without Whiny Women in America

Schools have even closed, too — so there’s no learning going on in three school districts due to teacher absences: Alexandria City in Virginia, Prince George’s County schools in Maryland, and Chapel Hill–Carborro Schools in North Carolina.

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If you are indeed serious about celebrating females, here are better options for making a difference in the lives of women:

1.) Visit a senior center. Many elderly women living in these senior centers do not receive any visitors at all. They have stories to tell — they’re just waiting for someone interested in hearing them! Lonely seniors are more likely to decline and die faster, and isolated elders also have a 59 percent greater risk of mental and physical decline than do their more social counterparts, according to AgingCare.com.

2.) Make an appointment to see your daughter’s school administrators — and get to know her teachers. This is a great time to call the school and see if you can drop by to review curriculum, or to set up an appointment to do so in the future. Show administrators and staff that you have an active interest in your child’s education. It will mean a lot to everyone, including your children.

“I learned so much from physically going to the school and saying hello to the new principal,” said one Boston-area mom of a 14-year-old girl. “He could then put a face to a name — and he knows my daughter has someone invested in her education. Email is sometimes too easy.”

3.) Take your old work clothes to a women’s shelter. Women in dire circumstances need all the help they can get to rebuild shattered lives. Select some of your old suits in good condition and bring them to a women’s shelter — the people there will gratefully accept them, and this may be tax-deductible. Also inquire as to what other items they need; shelters always need hygiene and paper products, bedding, and non-perishable food. Visit the Dress for Success website to organize a clothing drive.

4.) Check a book out of the library on great women in history — and read it.

There are many books, of course, worth reading. Here are just two to start:

• “To Space and Back” by Sally Ride and Susan Okie. Ride shares the personal side of traveling into space as America’s first woman astronaut.
• “Evidence Not Seen: A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II.” Newlywed American missionary Darlene Deibler Rose survived four years in a notorious Japanese prison camp in the jungles of New Guinea. What she learned about faith and strength is incredible.

5.) Check in with a woman you know who needs support. Whether it’s a neighbor, a friend, a struggling teenage girl, or your own mother, call a woman and really listen to what she is saying. Let her know you care — and that she will always matter to you. You and she both will hang up feeling more bonded — and closer than ever before.

Relationships take time and energy, and our female relationships are among our most precious. An investment in these relationships benefits the whole family.