Hollywood celebrity Morgan Freeman famously called Black History Month (celebrated in February in the United States) “ridiculous,” his point being that black history is American history and they have no business setting it apart, even if the intentions are good.

This position puts me in mind of feminists who don’t believe in gender affirmative action because it undermines the equality that women are fighting for.

Both of these arguments have merit – there is something about “special treatment” that goes against the very ethos of egalitarianism and its twin, meritocracy. They are also based on a rather idealistic view of how the world works. Meritocracy, like democracy, is a lovely notion that rarely shows up uncorrupted in real life.

Anyone who believes that because a country has vanquished despotism because it holds regular elections has decided to ignore the many examples that modern African states provide, challenging that notion.

Anyone who believes that the best person actually “wins,” be it the job or whatever is at stake, is terminally naive. Systemic, unapologetic discrimination is why I am glad that we have an International Women’s Day to observe. Patriarchy is the only form of apartheid politics we still excuse as a global society.

It has been gratifying to observe the growth of the International Women’s Day movement globally over the years. From a brief and barely reported blip on the calendar only promoted by the most dedicated and strident gender activists, it has spread itself comfortably across the whole month of March and recruited people from all walks of life.

Part of the reason this is satisfying is because as a woman at least it means roughly four whole weeks dedicated to the examination of issues that come with this gender role, a nice break from the remaining 48 weeks of the year when it is business as usual.

This year’s campaign theme, according to the official website, is pure Internet-age: #pledgeforparity. Yes, you read that right, it is a hashtag! To make things easy for the user, and co-ordinated for the campaign, there is a convenient pull-down menu that offers you five pledges to choose from, complete with brief descriptions and suggestions for organisations and individuals on what kind of action to take.

Technologically-facilitated activism – convenient, accessible, simple! Of course I zeroed in on number 3: “Call for gender-balanced leadership.”

Confusingly enough, the pledge seems to focus on the private sector what with its nattering on about companies and boards. While that’s perfectly respectable, the glaring lack of the word “political” in the description/suggestion section was a mistake.

By all means let us pressure the capitalist machine to admit women to its highest ranks, let’s swing some hammers at the glass ceiling. But without considerably more women in politics changing the status quo will continue to be horrifyingly difficult.

Case in point: Nigeria. Africa’s most populous country and largest economy decided, via its legislators, to throw out the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill 2010 without even giving it the courtesy of a second reading.

You can hardly expect the patriarchy to vote against itself, can you? Just like that, millions of Nigerian citizens got shafted. We’re probably talking about a group of victims about the size of the population of Tanzania, plus maybe Rwanda and Burundi too.

To even begin to rectify this kind of situation, women are needed in politics in considerable numbers as part of the solution. Part, not all of it, but a crucial part nonetheless. Women legislators are much more likely to vote in favour of laws that protect children, women and widows – proving that self-interest can produce socially constructive results when done right.

Continuing with the theme of technologically assisted activism, I visited the Tanzanian parliament’s website with a simple question: How many of our elected legislators are women? After poking around various promising links for 15 minutes (that is equivalent to a month in online research time) I left without a quick and direct answer.

Egalitarian? Sure. Weird? Definitely. Something the website admin should fix? Absolutely.

And that, folks, is my EA-enabled contribution to International Women’s Day 2016 activism: An appeal to my parliament to improve its website. It’s hard to #pledgeforparity with no information to base the pledge on.

Have a gender-aware and progressive Women’s Month.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]