Just like how Mother’s Day is now a commercialized mutation of its original roots, Women’s Day has been hijacked by performative sentiments on social media. From the life-endangering groundwork that the women of the suffragette movement, the Civil Rights Movement, Gabriela, and so many other activist groups did to push for social change throughout history, Women’s Day is now, more often than not, a meaningless show of hashtags and photos of PR-friendly “feminists” on social media.

By itself, this well-meaning but ultimately empty celebration is all right. But in the greater context of how the fight for gender equity is nowhere near halfway done, when the lives of girls and women—and that includes trans women—all over the world remain in danger due to harmful sexist and fundamentalist beliefs, it comes off hollow, especially when it’s the most that most of us do, we who have benefited from the fight that the older generations of women had waged.

It’s especially shameless how some capitalist companies swoop in and make patronizing gestures to celebrate womanhood. Look at McDonald’s flipping its M to a W for one whole day. Or KFC introducing us to Colonel Sander’s wife Claudia. Or Burger King trying to incite moral outrage for clicks with an ad declaring that women belong in the kitchen (then in very fine print saying that there are still too few woman chefs in the food and beverage industry). These were marketing strategies that function as token shows of appreciation for women—and one of them is literally just a letter that was supposed to be a stand-in for all women—instead of, oh, I don’t know, properly compensating the actual overworked and grossly underpaid women that these global companies employ.

You know that when certified woman-beater, misogynist, and all-around loser Chris Brown feels free enough to chime in with his own International Women’s Day shout-out, there’s a whole lot more work to be done.

So what could we do? That’s a question I also grapple with constantly. As a middle-aged woman, I’ve become aware that women’s liberation isn’t just about my liberation. Choice feminism is a very individualistic approach to feminism, which often makes it an attractive gateway for young women to learn about the feminist movement. Yet in its focus on a woman’s individual, often mundane choices—Makeup or no? Should I shave my legs today or not? Do I feel like wearing a short skirt?—it ignores broader socioeconomic inequalities and the long-established effects of patriarchal socialization.

As I’ve come to understand, not all choices open to women are feminist choices. A lot of them are just limiting and predefined reinforcements of what society has traditionally deemed femininity to be. And the skirmish over these individualistic choices can get even the more privileged and educated among us bogged down with the details whereas many other women in the world don’t even have the option to make any of these choices for themselves. They’re literally simply trying to survive day by day.

What I know is that money talks. It could be highly uncomfortable but the more we try to put our money where our mouth is, the easier it gets to adjust our lifestyles to our principles accordingly. And the more there are of us who financially support businesses that not just preach but also practice paying their employees fairly, regardless of gender, maybe more companies would follow suit.

Also, passing the mic back, as Gabrielle Union put it, to the women who work on the grassroots level and yet remain uncredited for everything they do can help all of our perspectives broaden. After all, it can get pretty myopic to sit around with our women friends who come from more or less the same educational and socioeconomic backgrounds and nod at what each of us is saying. There’s a lot more to the fight for gender equity than what affects us and our circle of people.

As for the general celebration of womanhood, it shouldn’t just be for a mere 24 hours or a month. It should be an everyday thing, commensurate to the daily work women put in to keep the world—our homes, communities, workplaces, entire industries—running, right beside the men. There will definitely be less money- and attention-grabbing gimmicks once the appreciation for women becomes an unasked-for given and stops being treated as a once-a-year special.

“But men put in the work too! Why is there no International Men’s Day or Men’s Month? Wah wah wah!” Um, there is an International Men’s Day, brah. Officially, it’s every Nov. 19th, but with the way the world has been set up, it’s Men’s Day on any day that ends with –y. You all can keep it for now. Save your think pieces about “men’s rights” for November.

A version of this essay was published in March 2018 on the Preen.ph website as “Why we shouldn’t celebrate Women’s Day.”