On Mar. 8, Canada recognized International Women’s Day to celebrate the accomplishments of women-identifying people around the world. Except sometimes, it’s hard to feel like celebrating when the fight is far from over. Misogyny still runs rampant across the globe from microaggressions in casual conversation to full-blown hate crimes and sexist legislation.
Sure, some corporations might highlight Women’s Day in their advertisements, but what about the rest of the month when their female employees are still making 23 per cent less on average than their male coworkers? What about the fact that on a global scale, women still only have about 64 per cent of the legal rights of men? What about the nearly one in three women who will experience intimate partner and/or sexual violence in their lives? Womanhood deserves to be celebrated, but never forget that our rights and well-being deserve to be fiercely fought for.
Womanhood resists any one definition. That’s why, for this issue of The Cascade, we looked inward and explored our individual relationships with it. What do we admire about the women around us? What gendered challenges have we had to overcome? And what advice would we give to the little girls we once were?
Fabiola Cruz Alderete Columnist
When my mom was pregnant with me, her grandmother — my great-grandmother — kept asking what the baby was going to be. When my mom said, “a girl,” she was disappointed. My mom asked why, and my great-grandmother replied that women are lovely, but they suffer too much. That story has stayed with me because, in many ways, it feels like my first lesson in womanhood: to be a woman is to be born into both beauty and burden.
To me, womanhood is not something simple or soft. It is shaped by violence, by expectation, by unpaid labour, by impossible beauty standards, and by the constant feeling that no matter how much you do, someone will still tell you it is not enough. It is growing up in a world where femicide exists, where women are made to feel ashamed of their bodies at any moment and for any reason, and where survival itself can feel gendered. In my own family, I have seen this clearly. On my dad’s side, my grandmother was abused by her husband. On my mom’s side, both my great-grandmother and grandmother were left widowed very young and had to fend for themselves and their children with limited earning opportunities.
And yet, womanhood is also deeply beautiful. My relationship with it is complicated, but full of love. Women are community, tenderness, endurance, humour, and acceptance. We are often the glue that keeps families, workplaces, and entire societies running, even when that work goes unseen. What I admire most about womanhood is this power to create, to sustain, and to rebuild. The same grandmother of mine who was abused became one of the first women in her country to get divorced, kicked that man out, opened a salon, and pulled herself and her four children out of poverty. My great-grandmother, after becoming a widow, opened a dairy store. My maternal grandmother opened a soap and knitting business. My mother built a full life: a high-ranking position in a bank, a career, a marriage, and then me. Now that she is a widow, I increasingly admire everything she has carried and everything she has done for me with strength I can barely put into words. Women in my family did not just survive, they rebuilt worlds — and I truly think that that’s who all of us are as women!
If I could give advice to my younger self, I would tell her not to waste so much time worrying about how her body looks or how soon she will get a boyfriend. One day, she will understand those anxieties were never measures of her worth — just products of a world that profits from women feeling small.
This Women’s Day, there is so much to celebrate in how far women have come, but the fight is nowhere near over. We must remember the women still facing oppression across the world, and we must amplify the voices of Indigenous, Black, trans, disabled, and other marginalized women whose womanhood is too often erased or ignored. As The Lorax(1971) once said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” So, let’s care.
Cassie Williams Managing Editor
Womanhood for me is cranking my head over each shoulder when I walk to my car in a short dress after work. Womanhood is holding my keys with the sharpest one pointed out, or planning how to use my water bottle in case someone comes up behind me. Womanhood is clutching my drink at the bar and covering it with my hand the whole time. It’s being told things like “yeah but she’s only in that position because a man allowed it.” Womanhood is many beautiful things, but these are the less-than-magical ones I worry we all go through on an often daily basis.
Womanhood is fear. So what do I admire about it?
The resistance to give into that fear.
Through conversations I’ve had with the women in my life I’ve seen fear shift to anger, and sometimes there’s defeat, but the one thing there should never be is acceptance. There are so many magical things I adore about women and about being a woman, but I chose to highlight these things, not because I want to complain, but because these are the moments that I fear we have begrudgingly accepted.
There is a reality that our gender places bounds on new experiences or regular actions that make us unequal in the world. It’s important that amidst that, we never shrink to fit into societal expectations or limit ourselves to what we think we can achieve, or think we should achieve.
If I could give some advice to myself at 13, I would say: don’t place barriers for yourself when there are already so many that exist. Don’t dream of only the “safe” things available to you in life when others don’t have to think twice. You are destined for so many adventures and great accomplishments in this life. So be vigilant, and be smart, but never be accepting.
Caitlyn Carr Features Editor
Womanhood is a broad, hard to define term that looks different for all women. For me, it comes across as more of a feeling.
I feel it when I’m sitting in a meeting next to other women who are all bringing something meaningful to the table just by sharing unique perspectives. I feel it when I make subtle eye-contact with a woman being harassed at a bar and there’s that unspoken understanding that we’re now best friends for the rest of the night — even if we’d been total strangers before. When that girl at the mall compliments my shirt and I instantly tell her where I bought it. I feel it when I call people out for saying something misogynistic, ableist, or racist. Even when I butt heads with another woman because at least that means neither of us are afraid to take up space by speaking our minds.
Each of these things happen when a woman resists the behaviours that have historically been imposed on us for far too long. For the longest time, we weren’t allowed a seat in professional meetings, much less the ability to voice our thoughts. We’ve also been depicted in movies and TV shows as boy crazy and often fighting amongst each other for male attention — rather than prioritizing our friendships with other women. We’ve been portrayed as jealous and insecure, always tearing each other down rather than building each other up. We’ve been conditioned to be agreeable and easygoing, when instead we should be encouraged to be honest and unafraid of confrontation.
To me, a large part of womanhood is resistance — resisting expected behaviours, but also resisting the idea that any one of our actual expressions or preferences can solely be attributed to our gender. These things instead simply come from who we are as human beings. A woman who likes to wear converse is just as much of a woman as someone who prefers to wear high heels; or a woman whose favourite colour is pink and a woman who prefers green. To attribute any one thing solely to a woman’s gender is to rob her of part of her identity. I don’t just like fruity cocktails and The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017) because I’m a woman; I like them because I hate whiskey and love vampires.
We can reclaim some of these stereotypically “feminine” traits society imposes on us by recognizing that they are not necessarily tied to our womanhood, but to who we are as unique individuals. Alternatively, we can resist these imposed traits with equal validity if by doing so, we are remaining true to who we are as human beings. Only after society stops expecting specific behaviours and preferences from women, will we ever truly be seen.
Prati Kapoor Staff Writer
Call me biased, but for me, womanhood is the most gorgeous thing to ever exist. It’s a privilege to experience life as a woman; to be gentle, kind, sensitive, loving and magical all at once. There is something beyond explanation to be fierce and strong but also gently ethereal at the same time.
For me, the girl in the mirror — who once was an innocent girl holding a Barbie phone with baby hands — won’t let me settle until I become the woman of her dreams. Seeing glimpses of her reminds me of how far I’ve come, and that there’s still a long way to go. She helps keep my tender and soft side alive, protecting it at all costs.
If I could give some advice to my younger self about being a woman, it would be:
- Live for yourself. Don’t let anything stop you from chasing your happiness. You are not selfish for prioritizing your dreams. It is your life and you have the right to unapologetically live the way you want.
- Make your heart the prettiest thing about you. Yes, you’re beautiful — you are the hottest person I know — but beauty is temporary. A good heart, gentle soul, and strong values outweigh anything physical.
- Protect your softness. Don’t let it die. Continue to grow into a fierce and outspoken woman but don’t let the world harden your soft side.
- Dream. Imagine the most unrealistic things and chase every single one down. There is nothing you cannot achieve. Literally nothing. You were sent to experience this beautiful life so don’t take the opportunity for granted. Keep pushing through. When you lose, don’t let it stop you from trying again. But more importantly, when you do win, remember to not sit on your laurels.
Good intentions will help you define your destiny. You are fully capable of writing your happy ending and remember if it’s not happy, it’s not the ending.
Jasleen Sandhu Staff Writer
Something I greatly admire about womanhood is when a woman shares her strangest experiences or feelings and other women validate her with a classic, “That’s not weird at all!” The sentence is short, but the comfort it provides is enduring. There are many aspects of womanhood which I admire, but the capacity of understanding between women when we share our experiences with unabashed honesty is what I admire most.
Many of the most defining moments of my life have resulted due to conversations I have had with other women. Each interaction is different: the more raw topics are reserved for those closest to me, but even surface level conversations I have had with strangers are significant. Around women, I feel that I can be my most embarrassing and peculiar self. It’s also the reciprocity of this circumstance that means a lot to me as a woman: the fact that I get to share my inner-most thoughts, and that other women feel comfortable enough to share theirs with me too.
Ultimately, I find these conversations are about being brave — brave enough to share your truth and brave enough to respond in earnest. It would be far easier for each individual to only concern herself with her own affairs, but in my experience, women are willing to share their lives and have dialogue with one another, for each of us to listen and be listened to. Even if I don’t always understand the feelings or motivations of every woman I’ve known, and vice-versa, there remains a commitment to at least try.
Over the course of my life, the conversations I have had with women have made me reconsider the ways I look at life, reaffirm my belief in myself, and, above all else, have given me the courage to go out into the world as I am with the strength to become kinder and more open towards others. Womanhood is wonderful in the way that our conversations can allow us to challenge one another to be better and encourage each other to embrace our most authentic selves.
Darien Johnsen Editor-in-Chief
Womanhood. What a wild thing to try and describe. I grew up in the early 2000s, a time when gender was assumed and toxic ideas of what it meant to be a woman were constantly shoved in our faces. It was the era of Girls Gone Wild (1997), American Pie (1999), The Girl Next Door (2004), and worst of all, early Family Guy (1999-) — before everyone realized how shitty it was. What those things taught me was that being a young woman meant being sexy and submissive, being an old woman meant you were a mother or caretaker, and if you were childless, unmarried, or considered “ugly,” you were worthless. I wish I could say that I saw or was taught that there was more to it, but to my impressionable young eyes, womanhood was a mold that I couldn’t fit into.
I’m grateful for coming into my young adult life in the 2010s, when gender started to be questioned and ideas of how we are socialized to follow certain norms were being blown apart. It was revolutionary, women were taking back their power! What a time it was! Until, it wasn’t anymore. Lately, trad wife trends, thinspiration, and conservative ideas of womanhood seem to be gaining popularity once again, and I can feel all those dormant neural pathways that formed my early conditioning being reactivated.
A few years ago, I started to really see things for what they were — misogyny was so obvious, and it was everywhere I looked. I’m often overcome by feelings of suffocation when I experience it in any form — which is far, far too often. When asked to define my relationship with womanhood, I cannot help but define it by the things that are oppressive, that seek to shape it to their own will. I want to talk about the beauty of femininity, how we’re graceful, caring, and soft, but to me, it’s not that simple. I see womanhood as a battle, a constant striving to simply understand a self that has been objectified, ridiculed, or bullied into submission. I cannot define it, I don’t know what it truly looks like, or what I would tell my younger self.
Here’s what I do know: womanhood is mysterious and unique to each of us. I suppose that for me, it is a striving toward the divine feminine: a connection to my intuition, a practice toward being nurturing, toward healing, and an embrace and facilitation of community. But womanhood is also about tough love, rage, and standing up for those we care about. It is a constant oscillation between liberation and repression, and a balance between the toughness of healing and the softness of being healed.
