Happy International Women’s Day! It’s March 8th 2018, a day to celebrate all women.
The best way to celebrate women is to use your skills, abilities and opportunities to help and empower other women, especially those less fortunate than yourself.
All around the world there are women living in poverty, forced into the sex trade, sold into marriages to men decades older than themselves, owned by men, beaten, given no human rights, given no opportunity to have an education, marginalized, stranded in refugee camps, trying to raise their children in war zones, watching their babies die from easily treatable illnesses – the list goes on.
If you don’t fall into any of the categories above, congratulate yourself on your good fortune and then do something to help.
When you empower another woman you help build a better world for all of us to live in.
“Every now and then a girl need to reinvent herself. To shed the skin of her former self and write a new rule book for life” ~ Cara Alwill Leyba, Style Your Mind
10 Ways To Empower All Women
Volunteer.
You have time so use it to help others. Volunteering to help other women on any level helps both them and you. Help out at abused women’s shelters, help homeless women, help the disabled. Read to old people, take food to the infirm. When you start searching there are endless ways to volunteer and make a difference in the lives of women less fortunate than yourself.
Donate.
Give until it hurts. Pack up clothes and household goods that are not being used and donate them to Goodwill. Buy non-perishable food items and donate them to a food bank. Find female centric charities and write them a check. Give and give and give and you will receive and receive and receive.
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Sponsor.
Find a girl child to sponsor. There are so many countries in this world where by virtue of being a girl a child is unable to get an education. Whether you find a girl child to sponsor in sub Saharan Africa, Palestine, Pakistan or India – or anywhere else, your help can change a life. Change one life and you can impact hundreds. Studies have shown that when you educate the women in a village the infant and child mortality rates drop drastically.
Find women owned, women run micro businesses in impoverished countries and sponsor them. A little help goes an incredibly long way.
Refuse To Engage In Gossip.
Men seldom gossip. Gossip is mostly about women demeaning other women. When you refuse to partake in gossip you begin to elevate all the women.
March.
March for the causes you care about. March for pro life or march for women’s rights. March for the female causes you support and believe in. March for gun control, march to further causes that involve women’s rights. Whatever beliefs you hold, get out there and march with other women supporting that belief. The way to have our voices heard is to stand up and be counted. March/walk/run for breast cancer. There is power in numbers.
Be Supportive.
Be kind to other women. Be supportive to other women. Encourage those that are working toward a better life. When women are supportive instead of demeaning or dismissive they empower all women.
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Stop Competing With Other Women.
Life is not a competition. Be happy for the success of others and work on your own success. Don’t judge other women, don’t be bitter, don’t compete.
Support Women Owned, Women Run Businesses.
Make a conscious choice to support women owned businesses. Choose fair trade every time the option presents itself. Buy from brands that create opportunity for impoverished women.
Refuse To Buy From Sweatshop Brands.
Flat out refuse to buy from brands that make the choice to use unaudited sweatshop factories such as those in Bangladesh. Money talks – if brands suffer financially from using sweatshop factories that further abuse the world’s most impoverished women, then they will be forced to raise their standards. Your purchasing dollars are the only way to make a change.
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Vote.
Know that you are lucky to live in a place where as a woman you have the right to vote. Your vote does count, so make sure you exercise that right at every election. Do your homework and make sure you do not support someone who wants to take away women’s rights. The way to create a better world for women and to empower women is to vote.
“I raise up my voice—not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard…we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.” ―Malala Yousafzai
