I don’t take part in this sisterhood jamboree. Why? Let’s start with the Big Lie

Women are being lied to. Worse, the liars are often other women. Today is International Women’s Day. I no longer participate. The annual event perpetuates a Big Lie that women are in all respects the equal of men. This is nonsense.

Women are as intelligent, capable, determined and analytical as men. But we are not the same. Simply, biologically. We are the sex evolutionarily designated to bear children and nurture them with our bodies. Awash with hormones geared towards that process – even, tragically, when the equipment betrays us. The Big Lie tells us to ignore our physiognomy, but bodies have a way of making their wants and needs known. International Women’s Day upholds a model of womanhood which teaches us to override those sensations.

I will be forever grateful for a handful of feminists who have taken it upon themselves to warn young women that we were being lied to.

In the early 2000s, journalist Virginia Haussegger wrote a column for this masthead, titled “The sins of our feminist mothers”. In it, she lamented that her generation had been sold on a lie of “you-can-have-it-all” feminism. Haussegger is an impressive career woman, who discovered too late that her biological clock had ticked over past midnight. “I am childless, and I am angry,” she wrote. “Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase.”

In 2008, Lori Gottlieb wrote in The Atlantic that she regretted not having married her long-term boyfriend – with whom, she felt she lacked a “core connection”. Instead she got pregnant by herself, with the help of a sperm bank. Gottlieb confessed to now wishing she had a traditional family.

At the time I mainly read these articles with intellectual curiosity. But they were a useful primer. I too had been raised to focus on education and career. The greatest tragedy which could befall a young woman, my elders suggested, was to get pregnant too young, wasting precious potential. Men were a nice-to-have. If they didn’t meet the many criteria on lengthening lists describing height, hair, eye colour, income, status, aspiration, accomplishment, as well as another dozen or so personal attributes, they were not Mr Right, and a woman was better off on her own.

The list-making always struck me as ridiculous. Lists are barriers to letting your heart and your gut decide. Coming from a stable, loving home, I knew that men weren’t commodities acquired to impress your friends (though of course my husband, who will be reading this, was and is deeply impressive).

When the baby-hunger came for me in my turn, I was equipped to recognise the sensation, thanks to the women who’d written about suppressing their own too long. I am eternally grateful to them and I feel a responsibility to pass on the favour.

Because there are still so, so many lies that young women are told.

For instance, that babies are no fun. It sometimes feels like there is a concerted public relations campaign under way targeting babies; they’re everything from burdensome to bad for your mental health. Don’t get me wrong, they are hard work. Especially since many of us no longer have close networks able to provide meaningful support in the difficult first few months. That can be very lonely.

But they are also an immense joy. And those hormones I mentioned earlier suddenly come into their own. Babies flood the female body with the love hormone oxytocin and the reward-and-happiness hormone dopamine. Fathers get their own versions too. So basically having a baby is like one big dance party for the soul – the sleeplessness is totally worth it. And they just get better after that. I had no idea I could laugh as much as I have on a daily basis, and feel as much joy and fulfilment as I still do as a result of creating another human being.

Another lie, or mistruth, is that children get in the way of your career. That’s like saying that happiness gets in the way of life. It’s true, we’re currently not very good at supporting women who want to balance babies with work. This needs to be fixed (which is why I am providing campaign support to mothers pushing for more flexible childcare). But it’s also true though that children can reset your priorities. Being present for your child’s milestones can be as rewarding as career highs. Meanwhile, career lows melt away when they look up at you with undiluted adoration. Who needs the approval of the world when you are the world to someone?

Which is why I rage whenever I hear another lie which has become common: the so-called insurance policy of egg freezing. If a woman is at the point of freezing her eggs, it seems to me that she’s really thinking about having a baby. And if she is, it might be time to set that process in train. Only one in 10 women end up using their frozen eggs. And of those, less than 30 per cent end up with a baby.

As for relationships, a conversation that I had with a female friend a while back stayed with me. One of her teachers told her high school class of girls that, while there are some women who will enjoy many different short relationships, others will not feel fulfilled by these types of encounters. You need to work out what’s right for you, she urged the girls. In a society in which women are still slurred as sluts or prudes, knowing your preferences and owning them is real power.

If you do decide on someone, it helps to remember investment principles. Marriage is a portfolio designed to be held. Sometimes stocks go down, and sometimes they rise. Except in the case of abuse or violence, riding out the dips maximises returns, well beyond the honeymoon phase.

True feminists don’t deny female reality. Until International Women’s Day celebrates women and not just a limited idea of equality, I will continue to abstain. It is a big lie which betrays women more than it uplifts them.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

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