Recently there was a thing we celebrated called International Woman’s Day. Yes, there is Mother’s Day but we really do need to give more credit to all women in general. On the cover of Time Magazine is a big shot woman Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook who recently wrote a book called Lean In. She makes a point that women in the work place should be more aggressive and that everyone has to get used to it. It used to be that women would be afraid to look aggressive because if a man is aggressive he is a hero. If a woman is aggressive she is a bitch.

In the book she advises women not to listen to the negative voices in their head. The voices that say they aren’t good enough or that the most important thing is to be liked by everyone. At the same time she embraces taking time for what you want. She was offered the job as CEO of Linkedin, the world’s largest professional network and turned it down to have and raise a child for a while. Her message is important now because it is still a man’s world and it is not functioning too well. Men still can set themselves on fire when asked to go to the store to buy anything.

International Women's Day

(IWD), originally called International Working Women's Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements. Started as a political Socialist event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries, primarily, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet bloc.

In some regions, the day lost its political flavor, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother’s Day and Valentine‘s Day. In other regions, however, the political and human rights theme designated by the United Nation runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner. This is a day which some people celebrate by wearing purple ribbons.

Society needs to change and let women work around their biological clock. A woman should be allowed to have as many children as they want between the ages of 20-30 their most fertile years. Raise their children and let the 10 year old kids be involved in their schooling. At that point women should be encouraged to get all the degrees and higher education they want and pursue successful careers and have all they want on their biological schedule.

Motherhood should not be undervalued. Women should not be discriminated from good jobs just because they might have to leave because of maternity. Then this country undervalues women who need maternity leave. The statistics say it all. Croatia has one year of paid maternity leave. Canada has 50 weeks paid leave. Norway 44, Italy 22, France and Spain 16 paid weeks maternity leave. Pakistan where we found Bin Laden hiding gives their women 12 weeks. The United States gives our beautiful mother’s of our healthy children 0 that is zero paid maternity leave.

Do we have a philosophy that motherhood is undervalued in this country? Ironically, the top 40% wage earners in this country are women. Now we have women earning more than their male counterparts yet they are still the ones to get pregnant. Science has only perfected Viagra for hard on’s and Rogain for hair loss all for men. Women still do everything to manage a home. Then the women who make more money than their husbands often find that they have erectile dysfunction issues. Also, the men have hidden credit card debt because they still spend like they are the major bread earners of the family.

To bad no one really knows about International Women’s Day here in America. I guess not even knowing about it says it all.