My resolutions for International Women's Day

Each year, 8th March is International Women's Day. (Yes, yes, since someone asks Every. Single. Time., there is also an International Men's Day.)

This year, IWD is on a Sunday.

I saw an interesting toot in the fediverse from Eliza, asking men about their resolutions for IWD.

I had a think about this. I work for myself, on my own, so things about "being more aware of things in an office environment" is less applicable to me.

1) An explicit conversation about load with Sandra

("Explicit" as in "clear, intentional", rather than "overly sexy". Probably.)

I'm married, and Sandra and I share things pretty equally.

It really should go without saying, but nevertheless: I cook, clean, do food shopping, wash clothes, tidy up (I'm the tidy one!), and so on.

Sometimes one of us does more of one thing than the other, depending on what is going on in our lives.

Other things are split based on enjoyment from doing it, or just plain interest and skill. Sandra enjoys planning holidays, more than I do. I have no objection to sorting out the gardening, or doing "handyman" jobs around the house. Sandra is better at choosing presents for people; I'll sort out the car servicing and maintenance.

We communicate about this kind of thing quite a lot - we make a good team, IMHO, and that means genuinely working together and supporting each other - but one resolution for me, this IWD, is that I will take the opportunity to talk to Sandra explicitly about how we, as a couple, handle these things.

We can replan accordingly.

2) A day of boosting more women's (and agender / non-binary people's) toots?

I'm on the fence about this one, as it could be merely performative, and I already boost a lot.

But it is something that I can do, and raising awareness does have a value.

So, perhaps...

And perhaps especially toots about women's equality / rights / contributions etc.

Obviously, this would be based on "to the best of my knowledge" anyway. Not everyone wants to share what gender(s) they are, or are not, and that is absolutely their choice.

Update 2026-03-06 : Quinn Norton kindly shared some feedback with me on this:

I want to make it clear that I – a man – am not trying to tell you what women want, but if you’re open to some feedback: I personally really felt uncomfortable when I was tagged in International Women’s Day posts by (very well meaning) friends the first IWD after I’d come out on my blog as genderqueer/‘I’m not sure yet but probably not a cis woman??’

Obviously other agender, non-binary, etc. folks might feel differently (and there absolutely are people with those identities who feel aligned/connected to womanhood in some way) but to me it felt really invalidating of my gender.

So - even in the context of boosts, rather than tagging anyone (because, yes, absolutely, that feels fraught with problems to me - perhaps back to the drawing board on this one.

Or perhaps a focus solely on women, and - for this specific purpose - not including agender / non-binary people?

Others?

Perhaps. I will give this some more thought.

But I wanted to post this sooner rather than later, so I could also draw inspiration from what other men are planning on doing.