For the average man, International Women’s Day is observed with admiration, respect—and a certain degree of carefulness. Today, the world overflows with earnest declarations, serious reflections, glorious tributes, and passionate advocacy. All of it is necessary and welcome. Yet every once in a while, it may also help to step back and view the day with a little humour. What might an average man—supportive, slightly cautious, occasionally bewildered—make of the great global celebration of women? The following piece attempts such a reflection, offered with admiration, a touch of irony, and complete goodwill.
International Women’s Day places the common man in a thoughtful mood. It is the one day of the year when he becomes unusually careful with both words and opinions—rather like a diplomat negotiating a delicate treaty.
Some intellectually formidable women have remarked, with understandable irony, that this is the day when men solemnly acknowledge the equality of women, only to return to “business as usual” the following morning. The average man would like to protest that this is somewhat unfair. He has, after all, travelled a considerable distance from the attitudes of his great-grandfather, who believed the height of progressive thought was allowing a woman to choose the curtains.
History itself suggests that change has been real. The early champions of women’s rights marched, argued, wrote, and occasionally scandalised polite society. Their persistence eventually gave the world not only the vote for women but also a day of recognition, later embraced by the United Nations in 1975. Since then, women have entered professions, institutions, and leadership roles once considered entirely masculine territory—often performing rather better than the men who previously occupied them.
The common man observes this with admiration, occasionally mixed with mild alarm. In such moments he seems to do what men have done for centuries when confronted with complexity—he nods wisely and hopes nobody asks him to explain further.
Still, a curious feature of modern debate sometimes puzzles him. Equality, which once meant equal dignity and opportunity, is occasionally interpreted as a demand that men and women must behave identically in every imaginable situation. Nature, however, appears to have written a slightly more imaginative script. Men and women often differ in temperament, instincts, and ways of approaching problems—differences that have historically made cooperation rather useful.
This does not mean, of course, that the dreaded MCP – Male Chauvinist Pig—that memorable phrase of the 1970s—has entirely vanished from the landscape. The species survives, though mostly in smaller and increasingly embarrassed numbers. His opinions are usually expressed loudly and revised quietly.
The wiser approach, the average man suspects, lies somewhere between heroic slogans and stubborn nostalgia. The cause of women advances best not through perpetual skirmishes but through steady partnership: in homes, workplaces, and public life.
After all, the most durable revolutions in human history have often occurred not in rallies but in everyday habits—in how families share responsibilities, how institutions recognise talent, and how societies learn to respect difference without turning it into rivalry.
So the average man marks International Women’s Day with genuine appreciation. He recognises that the world has changed—and largely for the better. He also suspects that the future will belong not to those who shout the loudest but to those who learn the art of working together.
Perhaps the real success of equality will be the day when men and women can argue freely, disagree cheerfully, and still laugh together—without needing a special day to remind them, with the quiet hope that, somewhere along the road to equality, humour too will remain an equal opportunity tradition.
And if, in the process, men and women occasionally laugh at each other—and themselves—that may be the surest sign that equality has begun to feel natural.
scribo ad LX 