We are tired

As a woman, I have celebrated many March 8th at the institution where I have worked for over 15 years. I have taken part in discussion days and panels where we feel that we are understood by all. However, this year, I would have liked so much for the debate to be about our daily lives, that is, to discuss what we experience every day as women, mothers, partners, professionals. These four roles are not easy, one more complex than the other. We have already been taught that we are not born women, we become women. What does this mean? Who teaches us to become a woman? Do we really do it? I remember a conversation I had with my cousin Anne when we were very little. She asked me all these questions and so many more like: are there jobs I can't do just because I'm a woman? What is our place in this society? Do we even have a place? A few years later, when she was already 29 years old, I asked her how she was doing on March 8: I'm tired, she said.

I'm tired," she said. "Mary is a mother, not just any mother, but a fulfilled mother. According to her, the way her children look at her is worth more than gold. I spoke to her on her 36th birthday on March 8th and she described this environment to me. "Yes, I am a mother, I am the woman who is responsible for everything in the children's lives: for the choices the father makes, for the success or failure of his career, or in the lives of his children, as if they have spent their lives in diapers, and being spoon-fed by their beloved mother. The mother, the poto-mitan woman, they say. Am I happy? Do people wonder how I sleep? How do I deal with the natural anxiety that comes over me when I separate from my children, who for me represent the world? How do I recognize myself in this home where I give hugs, cook, take care of the clothes, follow the school program, while giving life lessons? I am also a wife or a concubine, who needs an attentive ear, good and long baths and massages, a shoulder to rest on, but who preferably has to put my needs last, to listen to the story of the hard day of my partner? I tell you, I'm tired.

Sandra is a professional woman, she is 32 years old she tells me. She takes advantage of her time, still alone, without a spouse or children, she tells me, to advance in her career. She tells me that she works since 7:30 in the morning and finishes very late in the evening. She likes her job, she finds herself in it, she is fairly well paid. In her office, she is wealthy, men and women are paid according to position and salaries are the same...but privileges, or at least some of them, are often given to men. She explained to me that the paternalism between them and the comfort of being with one of their own facilitates meetings outside of the office, a natural camaraderie has developed. Sandra admits that there are men with the same abilities as her, but who are not as good at the same job. She is often sought after and recognized as the ultimate "hard worker", but according to her, there is a double standard in the professional world when it comes to evaluating the contributions of men and women. She explains that she has to do twice as much as a man to get even the same recognition she is given. I fight harder than others, she said, and for what? When I asked her for her message for March 8, she answered: "I am tired".

Dear friends, what if I told you that these three women are only one? That these three characters live in one person? Do you understand the level of complexity of feelings of a woman - mother - partner - professional in 2022? Do you understand that I am looking for the fifth woman in me today? Yes, I am looking for that person who has been able to reconcile these four lives, the one who has been able to harmonize this duality in every woman. This woman who knew how to answer this important question: Who am I and what do I need to be happy? Without fear of judgment? Yes, because we judge all these women: the one who is not married, the one who has decided to stop her career to take care of her home, the one for whom career comes first; the one who has chosen not to procreate. We judge them all, yet a part of them exists in each of us.

This March 8, 2022 marks 47 years since the United Nations first recognized this day in honor of women's rights. This right that I am not sure we have, to simply choose our way. This year's theme is to break the bias...But before we break the bias, we need to work on ourselves, we need to know ourselves better, we need to know and make our voice known! In this month of reflections around the struggle for women's emancipation, I invite the women of the world, Haitian women in particular, to question themselves on their happiness and consequently, to work on themselves to know their inner self. Because, believe me, you will understand better then, that in spite of our courage to carry out all our daily fights, that at a certain level, we are all tired.