An equal world is an enabled world.
This March 8th mark International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements. It is also a call to action for each and every one of us to accelerate women’s equality. The first international women’s day was more than a century ago in 1911 and is celebrated around the world each year bring issues that affect women to the forefront.
It is also a day where women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political. The lead up to IWD has become a time of the year where women’s achievements are recounted and recognized in order to create awareness of how much has been achieved in every arena but has not been given the adequate or fair attention.
Initially IWD first emerged as a social force to bring to the fore women activities in labor movements at the turn of the 20th century in North America and Europe. However, over the years the scope has expanded to include women all around the world achieving greatness in all walks of life.
International Women’s Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike and has given much needed publicity to many issues and hardships experienced by women all over the world. While there has been much progress in the acknowledgement of a multitude of issues, there needs to be much more progress getting hands on the ground to actually make real change in the social conversation around equality as a whole.
The growing international women’s movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women’s conferences which have taken place every 5 years between 1975 and 1995 has helped make the commemoration a rallying point to build support for women’s rights and participation in the political and economic arenas.
In more recent times, the rise of women’s involvement in the political arena has become more accepted especially in the US, which has created a stirring of enthusiastic female leaders to come to the fore to fight for social justice and reform and also bring light to more issues such as Global Warming and LGBTQ issues.
To the women in our lives, we thank you for your strength, your humility, your courage and your enduring ability to fight not only for yourselves but for all of us.