As the world celebrates International Women’s Day (IWD), main world our bodies have given a recent perception into what the worldwide occasion stands for, this yr’s theme and the problems that activists are specializing in.
The UN’s theme this year is “DigitALL: Innovation and know-how for gender equality.”
This yr’s digital equality theme highlights how know-how is essential to advancing rights however a rising digital gender hole is impacting every thing from ladies’s job alternatives to security on-line.
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Based on the UN, 259 million fewer ladies have entry to the web than males, and ladies are largely underrepresented in science, know-how, engineering and arithmetic careers.
“Bringing ladies into know-how ends in extra inventive options and has higher potential for improvements that meet ladies’s wants and promote gender equality,” says the UN’s web site. “Their lack of inclusion, in contrast, comes with huge prices.”
Earlier UN themes have included local weather change, rural ladies and HIV/AIDS.
IWD is an annual occasion to have fun the achievements of ladies and push for rights progress.
It has roots within the US socialist and labor actions of the early 20th century, when ladies have been combating for higher working situations and the best to vote.
The primary recorded celebration was in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland when over one million individuals rallied to help ladies’s rights.
Since then, the occasion has grown not solely in dimension but in addition in its scope. Focus has expanded to points starting from violence in opposition to ladies to parity within the office.
Whereas no single group has possession of the occasion, the United Nations is usually on the forefront of celebrations after it formally acknowledged IWD in 1977.
Nonetheless, celebrations all over the world are often decentralized, though some international locations acknowledge IWD as a public vacation, together with China, Russia and Uganda.
Diversifying the day
Whereas the UN’s theme this yr underscores how the combat for gender equality has advanced within the 21st century, celebrations all over the world are additionally targeted on longstanding points together with poverty and violence.
A World Well being Group report in 2021 discovered that just about one in three ladies worldwide is subjected to bodily or sexual violence throughout her lifetime, a problem that ties in with ladies’s financial alternatives, entry to intercourse training and reproductive rights.
Lately, there has additionally been a push to make IWD extra inclusive of racialized ladies in addition to of transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming individuals, because the early motion was largely targeted on cisgender white ladies combating for voting rights.
Whereas IWD is an opportunity to boost consciousness on rights gaps, organizers additionally use the day to have fun progress and the achievements of particular person ladies.
