Celebrating women every time, every day!! |17 March 2021
March is a month where all women’s achievement is acknowledged and celebrating women is published. In Ladies Circle Seychelles we celebrate women every day and want to celebrate the pain and frustration a woman must endure.
Ladies Circle is an international club comprising of women. Circling since its inception on August 30, 2019 this is a movement where women around the world unite in friendship and service as a sisterhood to fight for issues that affect their communities.
Ladies Circle Seychelles on March 8, 2021, a recognised day of ‘International Women’s Day’, launched its first ever petition in uniting all the women of Seychelles to making hygiene products also known as sanitary pads or pads for period accessible and free to all women in the Seychelles islands.
Its founder and current president, Joanna Pouponneau, along with all its board members believe that our island women deserve a chance not to only feel appreciated but to also raise the bar when we state that women have equality in our country and we as women see it and feel that equality.
“Condoms are accessible to everyone on the island, which is a beautiful accomplishment. However, the personal act of intercourse is exactly that a personal choice, for a women or men. ‘Period’ forms part of a women’s biology, it is not a choice for a woman. It is painful, it does not have a ‘switch off’ button and it is part of a woman’s life. We live with it from a young age and grow up with it till our adulthood. That is a lot of money spent for a choice we did not have a say in. As a woman we are proud of our biology however we at Ladies Circle Seychelles believe that we can do better than just congratulate women, let us change the laws and truly walk the talk when we say, let us respect and celebrate women,” said Ms Pouponneau.
From sexual harassment, to being made to feel inferior in a work environment all the way to being unfairly treated due to going through a miscarriage and made to feel embarrassed because of the pain we as women endure.
The vision of the Ladies Circle Seychelles is to Engage, Educate and Empower their society by tackling issues that women face in their local communities every day and in doing so celebrate women’s success and pain along the way.
This month of March while we raise awareness for an environment where women have accessible hygiene product and have more platforms to ‘period talk’, we want to give voice to the pain a woman goes through and not only about the celebration of women.
In our club we are launching #rememberanceMarch this 2021 where we acknowledge the strength as well as the pain that all women must go through when it comes to losing a child. Miscarriage and loss are a subject that is not given due diligence and proper respect. We believe that this too needs to change. Mental and emotional health are under-looked severely. From how a mother who miscarries is treated in hospitals, to how the trauma and emotional pain they go through is disregarded and how a woman is not given enough space to heal. From going through the experience of losing your child through negligence or health complication, all the way to how a father who feels the same pain has no place or outlet to express his pain and how to mentally adjust and heal from having to lose your unborn child. While we celebrate let us also remember the pain a woman endures every time of every day.
Contributed
