Celebrate Intl Women’s Day by doing nothing

It's International Women's Day today. Since 1907, countries around the world have celebrated this day on March 8. Every year, feminists will mark the day with statements about equality and women's rights. In some places, people observe the spirit in which the occasion began – as a political event in support of women workers. In other places, it is celebrated as a kind of Mother's Day, with children and spouses giving flowers to thank women for another year's kindnesses.

Unlike many countries, Bangladesh has not yet made International Women's Day an official holiday. As the holiday's origin implies, women's movements and labour movements are historically intertwined. In the early 1900s, European and North American feminists pursued legal rights for women by arguing, in part, that they should receive respect for their new role as industrial workers. They also pursued improved work conditions in factories via the greater public sympathies for workers of the female gender. The day formerly called International Women Worker's Day used to neatly wrap up both of these ideas.

Here in Bangladesh, that old emphasis on labour places International Women's Day on one side of a current national divide. In the debate on development, one side correctly notes that advancements have led to prosperity for more people, alleviation of poverty, and improved quality of life – with the caveat that new inclusion in global capitalism has also created difficult work conditions for many Bangladeshis. The other side points out development's downsides (the loss of traditional lifestyles and the jarringly swift changes of urbanization), but struggles to integrate its clear benefits, such as equality for women. Neither side is entirely right or entirely wrong.

A century ago, International Women's Day added a counterpoint to the pro-development side: that the rights of working women should not be trampled in the process of industrialisation. This idea arose from the swift development of factories, and deplorable work conditions for women factory workers. In 1911, for instance, a factory in New York called Triangle Shirtwaist caught fire. In the atrocity, 146 workers died, mostly because exit doors were locked. Most were young women earning a poverty-level wage.

In this century, here in Bangladesh, the Tazreen factory fire killed 112 workers. Most died because management had blocked escape routes. The majority were young women earning very low wages. The urgencies of 1911 New York have become Bangladesh's issues today.

These lethal events, have led, quite rightly, to movements seeking improved conditions for workers, with a particular emphasis on women. These movements often argue that productive workers deserve better treatment because they function as the solid foundation under development and national wealth.

International Women's Day is one such effort — here in Bangladesh and elsewhere, a way to place women in a new role in an industrial economy.

The reason it is no longer International Women Workers' Day may be because the emphasis on workers duplicates Labour Day (also known as May Day). But these days are rather odd because, unlike most other special days, they focus on humans at the least festive activity, which is work. Often, the idea is that workers reach some threshold of activity and deserve a reward, which is basic respect, equality, and time to spend as non-workers.

Workers are important, and, like all people, they have rights to decent treatment. But these statements are not entirely sensible, because nothing about a human's worth requires a particular level of industrial productivity.

Industrial productivity may be one measure of how good a human is, but it's not the only one. Consider community participation, willingness to help others, courtesy, respect. Consider kindness to children, empathy for those suffering, and the upkeep of tradition. Those values are not emphasised within industrial labour – and yet they are crucial to collective human well-being.

The problem with linking human worth to productivity is that those who cannot work are no less worthy of respect. Imagine for the disabled workers from Tazreen (and also Rana Plaza), some of whom cannot work anymore. Imagine elderly, who are done with their working lives. Imagine mothers, who do valuable, unpaid, hard work not directly related to economic development. They all have value too.

Anthropologist David Graeber has written about "the non-industrious poor," by which he means ones who do not participate much in the industrial economy. "Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they're probably improving the world more than we acknowledge," Graeber says.

It might be so. Certainly, the idea is a useful counterpoint to debates on development – and one on which every side can agree.

Here in Bangladesh, 107 years and a continent away from where International Women's Day began, I propose celebrating the holiday in the way some Eastern European countries do – by giving flowers to women we love, not for the work they have done, but rather for how they fill up our hearts. I propose a new tradition, too: a moment of doing nothing, to contemplate the ways we are worthy of respect without being a crucial underpinning of development, or fighting for rights, or working, or doing anything at all.

Happy International Women's Day, Bangladesh.

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M. Sophia Newman, MPH, is a freelance writer and a public health researcher specialising in mental health.