Spotlight On: International Women’s Day 2019
What Is International Women’s Day?
International Women’s Day (March 8th) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since in the early 1900’s – a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women’s network or media hub is solely responsible for International Women’s Day, but it works to bring those organizations together.
What Is The Theme?
#BalanceforBetter is this year’s theme – better the balance, better the world.
“Balance is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue. The race is on for the gender-balanced boardroom, a gender-balanced government, gender-balanced media coverage, a gender-balance of employees, more gender-balance in wealth, gender-balanced sports coverage …
Gender balance is essential for economies and communities to thrive.” – International Women’s Day
What Can You Do?
This is a great day to:
- Celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women
- Raise awareness against bias
- Take action for equality
- Spread the IWD message on social media with #IWD2019 and strike the #BalanceforBetter pose
Why It’s Needed?
According to The Telegraph, a British newspaper, “The original aim – to achieve full gender equality for women the world – has still not been realised. A gender pay gap persists across the globe and women are still not present in equal numbers in business or politics. Figures show that globally, women’s education, health and violence towards women is still worse than that of men.” The World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap won’t close entirely until 2186. According to their 2017 report, it could still take another 100 years before the global equality gap between men and women disappears entirely.
This is too long to wait. So around the world, International Women’s Day provides an important opportunity for ground breaking action that can truly drive greater change for women.
