The commemoration of the International Women’s Day 2023

This year, to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD, 8th March 2023), I had the honour to organise and MC the inaugural CLAREC “Speed Research” event. Rocío Fernández, a founding member of CLAREC, kick-started the programme by sharing photos and memories of how CLAREC started as a women’s group denouncing injustices. Here is an excerpt of her speech. For the whole document, click here.

“CLAREC first steps can be traced back to actions of support among Latin American women in the faculty of education based on relatedness and recognition, that soon created a network of friends to deal with the lack of representation of a Latina identity and the absence of southern knowledges. These women: Elisa de Padua, Annie Rubio, Javi Marfán, Ana Trigo, and Consuelo Bejares, to name some of them, looked for solidarity in a place that many times is characterised by its competitiveness.”

The evening continued with an opening act by musician, educator & researcher Eleanor Ryan who shared  about the lack of recognition of women composers. She then performed a solo violin, voice and animation piece from ‘Anna Clyne’s Rest These Hands’. Her performance evoked a great feeling of collaboration and solidarity! 

The main event was a speed research exercise, where the auditorium at the Mary Allen Building in Homerton College was set up in cabaret-style seating. Seven presenters, all women, set up their table with materials to do a more intimate presentation. After a succinct ten minute presentation the MC rang a bell and shouted “speed research”, meaning the spectators needed to find another presenter, keeping the ratio of 3-4 audience members per table. The seven speakers were from different fields: Katherine Hasegawa (Venezuelan artivist), “Protect the Amazon Rainforest. I use artivism. Will you?”; Anna Kliampa (PhD student), “Women, Fashion and Ecology: Inspired by Vivienne’s Westwood Fashion and Activism”; . Yuxuan Wei (PhD student), “Not Starting from Zero: explore viewpoints of being a feminist through Q methodology”; Nicholle Montevalde (PhD student), “Young Women in Leadership”; Magali Ramos Jarrin (PhD student), “My research on access to higher education for females”; Katerina Ramos Soto (MPhil student), “Caribbean Women Filmmakers: exploring experimental aesthetics to challenge dominant narratives of gender, race and class”; and Anna Maria Del Fiorentino (PhD student) gave the audience the option of choosing one presentation between: “(1) A Job to Read and Write; (2) (Un)belonging in Higher Education and (3) Becoming a Woman (My Lived Experience)”.

After two rounds of presentations, the audience had the opportunity to comment about the presentations they experienced. One of the topics brought to the conversation was how to be responsible consumers, especially in the fashion industry to protect our environment. The second topic was about the role of allies of all genders. One of the two male spectators shared how he inherited from the men in his family the actions to support women; sometimes just by showing up. 

For the closing remarks, I recited two poems, one in Spanish and one in English. The poems were the result of a conversation I had with another member of our CLAREC collective, who questioned my use of the word celebration instead of commemoration. This was a very fruitful conversation as I searched for the meanings and reflected on the connotations. The result of this reflexivity process was the creation of two poems. See below the English version, and click here for the Spanish interpretation.

This event opened up a number of reflexive moments. One of these moments was to observe the lack of support from academic institutions to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD). It feels like a missed opportunity to make the population conscious of current discrimination issues built up by colonisation, and our current actions that as a society keep bolstering unacceptable behaviour and practices. IWD, is a day to recharge, educate and gain supporters to come together and create safe spaces for dialogue and exercise action.  This event taught us the importance of sisterhood, and the desire to gather and be ourselves. 

As the organiser and MC, I had the role of making the audience conscious of situations that came up and were delaying  the event. This was an opportunity to exercise empathy, and people responded very positively with solidarity and kindness. Little things such as: start the event at a time that we can include people with different lifestyles, waiting for a mum whose toddler is still jet lagged, the woman who was running five minutes late due to her job, and the freelance teacher who needs to leave early to facilitate a class. Planning for unexpected situations should be part of the programme, and I think that was part of the success of this event that left space to be flexible and kind. 

Although highly experimental, the event proved to be a tremendous success, and participants expressed their desire to participate again. Others commented they were very inspired. This day was an opportunity to network, to connect, to share research, to share their female experiences in society as mothers, as mature students, as activists living far from their home country, to share worries, to display all their identities that compose each SELF.

To see videos and photos of the event click here.