INTERNATIONAL WOMEN´S DAY 2026

Society might try to capture us behind a thick glass,

silenced, observant,

but we will always still see,

and we will never be quiet.

Sylvia Plath once wrote “I am, I am, I am”... a writer, perhaps.

And yet, maybe for Bonnie Tyler I would still be “just a woman”...

But what does she mean by just being a woman? What does she mean, when Jo March already taught us that “women have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. They’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty”?

We cannot forget, though, that as Simone de Beauvoir said, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”

But was I even born into this at all? Or have I simply been standing here all this time, watching women suffer in silence?

I truly hope I have not. I cannot have been. Not when Audre Lorde warned us that “your silence will not protect you”

So perhaps I am a writer, 

I suppose I must be.

But still, I must never forget that  “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”,

and I do not think I have money Virginia Woolf, 

and much less a room of my own, even though I am sitting in what is referred to as my bedroom right now.

But I do not think you would agree to call it my own.

We are always being shaped, contained, arranged.

Controlled. 

Aren´t we?

I do not know. But what am I, if not a writer? 

Maybe it is true and I am just a woman.

But oh, how I love to be a woman.

And what an honor it is to belong to the gender that fought.

The one who did not have it easy.

To be a part of all of this.

Because, as Gloria Steinem said, “the story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights”.

So I am a woman.

And I am a writer.

And I am a lover and I am charming, but I am also full of anger, and I allow it to be seen.

And I am thoughtful and I have manners, but I am not afraid to raise my voice.

And I may not be born with a room of my own, but I will certainly fight for one.

Because I am a woman, and that is what we do.

And not only that, but I am a woman inspired by each and every woman before me.

Because Ruth Bader Ginsburg already told me that “women belong in all places where decisions are being made”, and Malala Yousafzai knew before me that “we cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”

So I am a woman and I write.

And I do so for all the women before me who had to stay quiet, and for all those after me who must never have to.

For the women who never asked for a room of their own, but went and took it.

For those who insisted on being heard. And specially for the ones who insisted on existing, so that no one would ever have to do so again.

Today we remember that every page we write

is part of a longer story.

To every woman who ever wrote despite the silence.

Happy International Women’s Day

from Within the Bell Jar.