Women‘s Day / Frauentag

Germany was the first country to celebrate the day 110 years ago, along with Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, building on the proposal of German socialist activists Luise Ziets and Clara Zetkin. It's now a public holiday in Berlin, though admittedly up here in provincial Greifswald the main manifestation seems to be presenting womenfolk with carnations...

As the father of an independent and adventurous almost seven year old daughter, I'm happy to be bringing her up in a place with egalitarian gender norms. Under the communist economic model, nearly all parents were needed to work full-time. Thirty years after the wall came down, that legacy seems to live on, with mothers here about as likely to work as fathers, whereas the West still suffers from its history of church and state actively encouraging inequality. We are certainly happy with supportive and heavily-subsidised nursery care here (though the school struggles to accept it's dad who does drop-off and pick-ups, and only ever emails mum, or worse sends handwritten notes in the infuriatingly anachronistic 'Muttibuch').

On the pick-up today I photographed this statue, which stands in front of the woman's clinic. I'm ashamed to admit that at first I thought her a bit grumpy and frumpy for a plinth. But let's face it, there are far too few statues of women, and we certainly need more of older, plainer, more ordinary folk - so I actually think this one makes a refreshing change, and suggests hope for a better, more equitable future.