March 6 (Reuters) – Because the world gears as much as have fun Worldwide Ladies’s Day (IWD) on Wednesday, here’s a take a look at what the worldwide occasion stands for, this 12 months’s theme and the problems that activists are specializing in.
WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY?
IWD is an annual occasion to have fun the achievements of girls and push for rights progress. It has roots within the U.S. socialist and labour actions of the early twentieth century, significantly as ladies have been preventing for higher working situations and the precise to vote.
The primary recorded celebration was in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland when over 1,000,000 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 commonly on the forefront of celebrations after it formally acknowledged IWD in 1977. Nevertheless, celebrations world wide are normally decentralized, although some nations acknowledge IWD as a public vacation, together with China, Russia and Uganda.
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WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY THEME?
The U.N.’s theme this 12 months is “DigitALL: Innovation and expertise for gender equality.” The subject highlights how expertise is essential to advancing rights however a rising digital gender hole is impacting all the things from ladies’s job alternatives to security on-line.
In line with the U.N., 259 million fewer ladies have entry to the web than males, and ladies are largely underrepresented in science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic careers.
“Bringing ladies into expertise ends in extra artistic options and has better potential for improvements that meet ladies’s wants and promote gender equality,” says the U.N.’s web site. “Their lack of inclusion, against this, comes with huge prices.”
Earlier U.N. themes have included local weather change, rural ladies and HIV/AIDS.
WHY IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY IMPORTANT?
Whereas the U.N.’s theme this 12 months underscores how the struggle for gender equality has developed within the twenty first century, celebrations world wide are additionally targeted on longstanding points together with poverty and violence.
A World Well being Group report in 2021 discovered that almost one in three ladies worldwide is subjected to bodily or sexual violence throughout her lifetime, a difficulty 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 preventing 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.
Reporting by Josie Kao in Toronto; Modifying by Lisa Shumaker
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