People across the globe will join together on March 8 to celebrate grandmothers and mothers, sisters and daughters, aunts and friends as part of International Women’s Day (IWD). In Victoria, people will gather over the next couple of weeks during the first annual LoudSpeaker festival — a celebration series geared to rejoice women through art.

Time to get loud

“LoudSpeaker is a festival of music, theatre and poetry in celebration of International Women’s Day,” explained Andrea Routley, who organized this year’s festival with Emma Cochrane. The festival, with runs from Feb. 28 to March 14, will include everything from open mic nights to a showcase of women in comedy, to monologues and naked readings. Topics and performances will range from touching to tearful, but the focus of each performance will be women.

“We wanted to have a festival where we didn’t really censor what people are going to say, what they’re going to perform. We don’t tell them how to represent women or feminism. They just take their experiences, who they are and what they are and put it on stage,” said Routley.

Cochrane believes sharing these experiences can promote change.

“If someone in the audience connects with one of those stories then there’s a change,” Cochrane said. “When someone who has also felt marginalized or ostracized is able to connect with someone on stage telling a story that resonates, then there’s a transfer of emotion or support.”

Routley and Cochrane started talking about organizing an event after seeing AIDS Vancouver Island’s “Viral Monologues” in November. They started asking around, and found the response to their ideas “surprisingly positive and encouraging,” with artists and venues more than willing to help out.

Proceeds from LoudSpeaker series will support Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society (PEERS) which provides support and other resources for sex workers.

“They support a group of women (and men) who are maybe the most vulnerable in our society,” said Routley. “There’s a lot of unnecessary hostility toward sex workers in our society.”

Routley and Cochrane were drawn to PEERS not just because of what they do, but also how they do it in a way that doesn’t preach or impose.

“[PEERS] has exit strategies if people want exit strategies, but if not, they ask how we can makes this line of work comfortable and safe,” notes Cochrane.

Words against violence

One series of LoudSpeaker performances will not only benefit PEERS, but also V-Day, an ongoing global campaign to raise funds and awareness of violence against women.

On March 8, 12 and 14, UVic will host performance readings from a Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer, a collection of work edited by Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues. Ninety per cent of the proceeds raised from the performances will also go toward PEERS, while the other 10 per cent will go to this year’s V-Day spotlight, projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that support an end to violence against women.

The performances will include 10 readings, most of which are monologues, split in to the categories of memory, monologue, rant and prayer.

“We’re not trying to appropriate these stories in any way. It’s clear these aren’t our stories. But we want to share in other people’s stories with an audience,” said Lise Gaston, a fourth-year English student who will be reading at the event.

A day of days

German socialist Clara Zetkin tabled the idea of having an international women’s day at a conference in Copenhagen in 1910. Her vision was to have one day every year to celebrate women and focus on their demands, including better working conditions, universal sufferage and an end to discrimination on the job. IWD was marked for the first time on March 19, 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In 1913, IWD moved to March 8, and has been celebrated on this day ever since.

Although women in many western countries have achieved leaps and bounds in terms of gaining rights in the decades since the first IWD, women all over the world still face barriers today.

“I don’t think we’re there yet,” said Annalee Lepp, chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at UVic. “We can find instances of issues that women still face, and if you’re a racialized woman, this is compounded by issues of racism.”

These barriers can still be seen in Canada, where it’s often assumed that women have gained equality. One Statistics Canada report from 2007 showed that women aged 25 to 29 earned 20 per cent less than men in 1991. That gap had narrowed to 18 per cent by 2001, though Statistics Canada noted the only reason for the decline was that more women were obtaining university degrees. Information from the 2006 census showed that the median earnings for a full-year, full-time earner in Canada were $41,401 in 2005. However, while the median for men was $46,778, the median for women was only $35,830.

“The labour market is still structured in ways that women do much more part-time casual labour because of family responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera,” says Lepp.

Women’s world

1975 was designated International Women’s Year by the United Nations (UN). During the year, the UN gave IWD official recognition. Each year since, the UN has chosen a theme for IWD, though individual organizations and governments often modify the UN theme or choose a different theme entirely. The UN’s theme for IWD 2009 is “women and men united to end violence against women and girls.”

Cochrane notes that this theme isn’t exactly timely.

“It could have been a theme for the last 10 years,” she said. “But it is something that needs attention globally and locally.”

Local violence against women is something that has been overlooked by many Canadians who often see it as an overseas issue. But the lack of awareness doesn’t mean that it’s not serious. Statistics Canada’s 1993 Violence Against Women survey found that one-half of all Canadian women had experienced at least one incident of violence since the age of 16. The survey also found that four in 10 Canadian women have been the victim of sexual assault. Sexual assault is also one of the most under-reported crimes; Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) estimates that fewer than 10 per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police.

Statistics Canada’s 2006 report “Violence Against Women: Statistical Trends” showed that rates of spousal violence and spousal homicide are even higher for Aboriginal women than for non-Aboriginal women or for Aboriginal men.

“[Violence against women and girls] isn’t something that’ll be fixed this year and then next year we’ll just go on and pick another theme,” said Routley.

Lepp says that including men in the theme is important.

“Men are part of this struggle [against gender-based violence] and need to be part of this struggle,” she said. “I think it really registers the fact that men have a very important role to play in these global struggles around equity [and] diversity.”

What’s in a theme

Canada chose not to go with the UN’s theme this year.

Instead, Status of Women Canada has designated “Strong Leadership + Strong Women + Strong World = Equality” as the country’s theme for IWD 2009.

According to the Status of Women Canada website, the theme “reflects the government’s firm belief that increasing women’s participation and access to leadership roles and opportunities will help women and girls thrive, reach their full potential and fulfill their dreams, and help build a more prosperous Canada.”

But Lepp says that women are not grabbing the opportunity to get into political leadership. She notes that there are several possible reasons for this, including political parties running women in places where they are unlikely to win seats and the fact that Canadian politics continues to be “a boys club.”

“The culture of political life hasn’t shifted in significant ways that would suggest a conducive space for women,” said Lepp.

And even if there were more women in Canadian politics, Lepp isn’t convinced it would change the status quo.

“I think in many respects there’s a liberal model here, [with the thought that] if you position women in leadership roles, change will happen,” she said. “My argument is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that. You can have women in very powerful positions, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to change in terms of equity or economic injustice. To play the numbers game can be dangerous.”

For Cochrane, who is also the Women’s Collective Co-ordinator at CFUV, change comes from below, not above.

“You start from the ground up and encourage women to get involved and hopefully it translates into wider change,” she said.

In Cochrane’s position of Women’s Collective Coordinator, this means trying to increase the number of women programmers and volunteers at CFUV so more women will be employed in media related jobs and eventually there will be a more accurate representation of women. Women currently make up about 36 per cent of on-air programmers at CFUV, up from 10 per cent in the 1990s.

“More often than not, the media attempts this kind of neutrality, but by attempting neutrality, you default to the dominant and the other angles are excluded. It’s not neutral,” says Cochrane. “In any kind of public affairs issue, [you have to think] about it from the different perspectives and [think] about how gender, race, class, ability, sexuality… are all at play in a specific issue.”

Gender busters

The image of a strong woman is still one that conjures fears — even in Canada, even on a campus like UVic, with a population of 75 per cent women.

“I think there’s a lot of ignorance about what feminism is,” said Routley. “The image is still of a bra-burning angry woman.”

Gaston also believes that the fears surrounding feminism stem from misunderstanding.

“There’s a difference between man hating and wanting women to be equal,” she said. “I think [feminism] is about women being able to do whatever they want. If you want to wear a short skirt, you can. If you don’t, who cares?”

Cochrane notes that women aren’t the only ones who have something to gain when it comes to putting current gender roles and relations in the past.

“An end to patriarchy is good for men too,” said Cochrane. “The social construction of masculinity is very limited and very rigid. There’s not a lot of flexibility in these binary gender roles we’ve created. And feminism is trying to break those [roles] down.”

Lepp notes that Women’s Studies is also about more than just studying women.

“What we’re promoting here is a movement of social justice that includes everyone,” she said. “The lense — to some extent, is gender. But it crosses all levels of difference.”

LoudSpeaker Events

She’s So Loud: A Showcase of Women in Comedy

Thursday, March 5, 7:30 p.m. at the Victoria Event Centre Cost: $12

Kate Reid: In Concert and Up Close

Friday, March 6, 8 p.m. at Spiral Cafe Cost: $10

Reading of “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer”

March 8, 12 and 14, 7:30 p.m. at UVic’s David Lam Auditorium Cost: $5 - $10

For more information visit

www.myspace.com/loudspeakerfestival.