Rugby teaches one simple rule: a person’s worth depends neither on their status nor on their gender, but on what they bring to the collective.

So I dedicate this message to every woman involved in rugby:
to the players, the administrators, the volunteers, the elected officials, who keep this sport alive every day through their commitment.

And also to all the men who do not look at them as women to be singled out, but simply as partners, as team-mates, as full members of their team.

?̀ ???? ???, ???? ?? ???? ?????????, ??????? ?????? ??’?? ?????? ??? “??????́? ?? ?? ?????”.

No.
There is no such thing as women’s day!

There is the International Women’s Rights Day.

And the difference is enormous.

I am not a campaigner for some heightened feminism that would turn men into opponents.
I have always defended one simple conviction: equality between women and men.

But that equality is built neither on caricature nor on ignorance.

Because only a few days ago, I was faced with a revealing situation:
that of a manager who sincerely thought he was talking about “national women’s day”.

As if women needed to be consecrated, celebrated or honoured once a year.

That confusion is not harmless.

8 March was never created to celebrate “woman”.
It was set up to recall the struggles for women’s rights:
the right to vote, equal pay, access to education, freedom and dignity.

Talking about “women’s day” means turning a day of struggle for rights into a day of paternalistic celebration.

And in a world where misogyny and discrimination still exist, that failure to understand says a great deal.

Women do not need to be honoured once a year.

They need their rights to be respected every day.

And that is perhaps where the most revealing mistake lies.

Every time we try to “give value to women”, to celebrate them, to devote a day to them as if they needed some particular recognition, we miss the essential point.

Because the question is not about giving value to women.
The question is about recognising equality.

And as long as some continue to believe that women have to be set apart in order to be better honoured, what they will above all be showing is that they still have not understood what is really at stake in the workplace, in the voluntary sector and in society in general.

The point is not to single women out.
The point is to stop singling them out.

I also want to close with a thought for all the women who, every day, in institutions, in companies, in the voluntary or sporting world, keep fighting so that parity is not a mere mechanism of quotas, but the recognition of one simple reality: competence.

Above all, let us hope to meet on our way men who are intelligent enough not to see a woman’s competence as a threat to their own self-assurance, but on the contrary as a complementarity that allows everyone to progress and to grow together.

Because deep down, the truth remains the same:

Competence has no gender. ✊

Opinion piece written by Elisabelle Bourgue Cadets Alamercery official at Aviron Bayonnais Association & elected member of the board of the Ligue de Rugby Nouvelle Aquitaine.