International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day, one and all!

I hope you all managed to get some kind of celebrating done today, there seemed to be lots going on, so no excuses for not getting involved! I've had a great day, personally! Syma from the Glasgow Women's Library runs some of the projects that I volunteer with and she asked if I could help her with a card-making stall that she'd been asked to run as part of the IWD festivities at the City Chambers.

So, I went along and I got to sit in and listen to some of the talks and speeches from various people there. One woman did a funny poem about the menopause; another did a monologue about the life of St Enoch who was the mother of St Kentigern. (who is also St Mungo, in case you didn't know!)

There was a short fashion show, demonstrating various traditional or native dress from all over the world: India, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Iran... plus a nice dance segment with the same women performing typical dances in a group. They started with a lovely solo Iranian dance, which merged into a highland fling, followed by some Charleston action and what looked like a bit of Bollywood thrown in too!

Then during the break we went back to our stall and the crowds arrived to start making some cards! The idea was to make a card to give to a special woman in your life. So some people were making good luck, congratulations or thank you cards for friends, one woman made a card for her wee daughter and covered it in purple sparklies, purple pen, purple butterflies... because her daughter was 'purple mad!' And then two women came along and started making Mothers Day cards, and they ended up looking fantastic, really arty and pretty - at least as nice as anything you'd buy for a fiver out of Clinton's!

I made Mother's Day cards for my mum and my granny, too, as well as one to send to my friend who just got an awesome new job. It was good because I could stick my cards up so people could get an idea of what they could do, and I also got to go wild with glue dots, stampers, sticky gems and coloured pens!

There were various other stands there, though unfortunately I didn't get a chance to see much of them. There was one offering advice on breast-feeding, another selling hand-knitted (I think) baby clothes and *drum roll* a cupcake stand with some amazing looking cakes!

Syma bought me a Raspberry Ripple cupcake for my crafting efforts, and it was so tasty I took a picture of it. Should really have thought of taking the pic before I'd eaten half of it, but never mind. Edible glitter, lush icing and big juicy raspberry. It's everything I ever wanted in a cupcake.

All in all, it was a really good event, quite heartening to see so many people there, all different ages, backgrounds and ethnic groups seemed to be represented, and some of the speakers were really impassioned and uplifting, especially one woman who spoke about the need for more women board members in FTSE 100 companies, more women editors in newspapers and on the news, more recognition for women scientists, in Scotland and across the world... If ever a good dose of feminism was called for, it was definitely available in the City Chambers today.

Although I guess you all know that the GFN vigil is on Friday evening, a quick reminder doesn't hurt: 5pm in George Square, I hope many of you can make it, and bring lots of support!

This is the video I shot if the dancers at the City Chambers today, sorry the sound quality isn't great but I was just recording on my phone. You can get an idea of it though, and the women are still wearing some of the lovely outfits that they showed us during the fashion show earlier.

Once again, I hope you all had a lovely International Woman's Day 2011 - which, I found out today, is the 100th Anniversary if IWD. If that's not cause for celebration, then I don't know what is!

--Clara x