The first time it hit me, I was walking the streets of Toronto with a friend who was visiting from Paris. It was a hot summer day, and Queen West was full of colorful flary dresses strutting on it.

My friend was wearing a long vivid red dress with pretty, yellow flowers, modernly painted on it, our loud conversation was interrupted by this woman in her 60s or 70s, chic with stylish eyewear and a contagious smile stopped us to compliment my friend on her dress. Once she passed us, my friend was astonished and was repeating in different ways, that in 10 years of living in Paris, no woman has ever complimented her on anything, not her hair nor her clothing, she was stunned.

“The world needs more Canada” that saying written in bold on Indigo walls which is a catch phrase to many, including my dad, meant something to her.

I, on the other hand, was grasping, perhaps for the first time, how much women get empowered by their own kind.

Art Print (left): Women Supporting Women by Fatimighart. Illustration (right) by Tinkoutsidethebox.

The media and the world around us make us always look for male affirmation, admiration and confirmation. We have been taught to dress to impress men, be sexy at home and be aggressive at work without crossing the line of making a man at work feel less than us. Which is probably the underlying reason why women are competitive with each other, and treat each other as rivals instead of equivalents, and peers.

With age, we understand that women complimenting each other will go a loooooong way; not even comparable to men complimenting us.

I work in a very male-dominated industry, and still, some men – I must say some because I am so lucky that all the men in my workspace are feminists and they themselves inspire me on so many different levels of life – are still trying to use the old strategies, and say things like:
Put them in competition, they will work better.
God knows if they are alone in a room, it will turn into a catfight.

The era of these kinds of lines has passed, women know better now.

Yet we still need to work on it, push ourselves to give our kind more support, more love, more affection, more compliments.

The impact we have on each other is very powerful. Hearing your women friends telling you how proud they are of you, can be magical.
Giving a compliment to your mom on a new dress she is wearing boosts her confidence.
Telling your co-worker “Great job” might ease her pain of being away from her child.

Some of us still hesitate to be supportive.
I know, I get it.
Sometimes you feel that your kindness remains unreciprocated for a long time and that all you are given back is indifference.

But you know what, you will receive the kindness, warmth and support you deserve from somewhere else. As the saying goes: what goes around, comes around.

When I was going through my divorce, a friend gave me reassurance that always stayed with me, she said “You might see some of your close friends or even family looking away or treating you coldly, but you will get support from people you never expected.

The support will come eventually, in some way.

And sometimes we need to demand support. In the past month, with the bravery that my younger Iranian sisters all over Iran have shown, we Iranians outside of Iran feel helpless and powerless, but in one of the stories that went viral, a celebrity lady was saying “You all should demand support from your city councils, from your MPs, from public figures with effective platforms”.
And I realized that I have never done this.
I never demanded support like this.
Maybe because I was raised in a country where if I demanded something, the punishment would have been jail or even death, but I am here, I am lucky to be here, so why don’t I demand it.

So I started messaging some of the women in power with big platforms, some replied, some didn’t.
I emailed MPs in my neighborhood, some replied, some didn’t.
But those who did reply got me pumped.

So, ladies,
Let’s be more affectionate to each other.
Let’s tell each other nice things more often.
And let’s hope the new generations to come don’t feel the need to talk about women empowering each other.
Let’s hope they will already be empowered.

We all just have to start looking at our own with a kinder smile, with a kinder eye, with a kinder heart.
Once a friend flies higher, they can help us fly higher too,
And it will only get better from there. When we rewire our emotions, our thoughts follow, then our actions.

And let’s not forget
#Loveistheanswer

Artwork: Feminist by Giselle Dekel.