International Women’s Day 2018: Press for Progress

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated every year on March 8 to salute women’s achievements throughout history and across the world. It is also known as the United Nations (UN) Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.

International Women’s Day is not about affirming the authority of one gender over the other. The UN instituted International Women’s Day to honor the achievements and contributions of women in every sphere of life – be it political or global or domestic. The day is celebrated to salute the spirit of womanhood. The celebration varies across different regions. But generally it is a way to give respect to women and appreciate them for their achievements.

Women’s Day every year has a theme. The 2018 theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”.

International Women’s Day will be particularly poignant in 2018, being 100 years since the Representation of the People Act was passed allowing women over the age of 30 to vote.

In 2018, sexual harassment and discrimination against women has captured headlines and has been a more prominent part of public discourse and many voicing their desire for change. IWD provides an opportunity to empower women and celebrate activists working to attain women’s rights on a global scale.

2018 Theme: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives

The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March, is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”.

This year, International Women’s Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality and justice. Sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women has captured headlines and public discourse, propelled by a rising determination for change.

People around the world are mobilizing for a future that is more equal. This has taken the form of global marches and campaigns, including #MeToo in the United States of America and its counterparts in other countries, protesting against sexual harassment and violence, such as #YoTambien in Mexico, Spain, South America and beyond, #QuellaVoltaChe in Italy, #BalanceTonPorc in France and #Ana_kaman in the Arab States; “Ni Una Menos” (‘not one less’), a campaign against femicide that originated in Argentina; and many others, on issues ranging from equal pay to women’s political representation.

International Women’s Day 2018 is an opportunity to transform this momentum into action, to empower women in all settings, rural and urban, and celebrate the activists who are working relentlessly to claim women’s rights and realize their full potential.

Echoing the priority theme of the upcoming 62nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, International Women’s Day will also draw attention to the rights and activism of rural women, who make up over a quarter of the world population and majority of the 43 per cent of women in the global agricultural labour force.

They till the lands and plant seeds to feed nations, ensure food security for their communities and build climate resilience. Yet, on almost every measure of development, because of deep seated gender inequalities and discrimination, rural women fare worse than rural men or urban women. For instance, less than 20 per cent of landholders worldwide are women, and while the global pay gap between men and women stand at 23 per cent, in rural areas, it can be as high as 40 per cent. They lack infrastructure and services, decent work and social protection, and are left more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Making the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals a reality, to leave no one behind, needs urgent action in rural areas to ensure an adequate standard of living, a life free of violence and harmful practices for rural women, as well as their access to land and productive assets, food security and nutrition, decent work, education and health, including their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Rural women and their organizations represent an enormous potential, and they are on the move to claim their rights and improve their livelihoods and wellbeing. They are using innovative agricultural methods, setting up successful businesses and acquiring new skills, pursuing their legal entitlements and running for office. Recently, as hundreds of courageous women from the film, theatre and art industry in the USA started speaking against sexual harassment and assault by powerful men in the industry, they found a powerful ally in Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, the national farmworker women’s organization, no stranger to the abuse of power.

On 8 March, join activists around the world and UN Women to seize the moment, celebrate, take action and transform women’s lives everywhere. The time is NOW.

What is this year’s International Women’s Day campaign? 

This year’s campaign theme #PressforProgress shines a spotlight on gender parity, with an emphasis on gender inclusivity and new gender parity initiatives.

The theme offers an important reminder that we are over 200 years away from gender parity according to the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap Report.

“Now, more than ever, there’s a strong call-to-action to press forward and progress gender parity. A strong call to #PressforProgress. A strong call to motivate and unite friends, colleagues and whole communities to think, act and be gender inclusive,” the IWD website encourages.

“So together, let’s all be tenacious in accelerating gender parity. Collectively, let’s all Press for Progress.”

What are International Women’s Day’s origins?

The earliest observance of a Woman’s Day was held in New York on February 28, 1909, and was organised by the Socialist Party of America.

A year later, at the International Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, Socialist representatives proposed that there be an International Women’s Day, inspired by the demonstration in New York.

The delegates agreed that an international day should be formed as part of a strategy to promote equal rights for women and women’s suffrage.

It was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911.

Two years later, in 1913, it was proposed that the date be moved to March 8 and it has been celebrated on this day ever since.

20 Inspirational quotes for International Women’s Day

1. “Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.” – Coco Chanel
2. “Women are clear-headed, they are more creative and for this reason, sometimes, also more fragile.” – Emma Bonino
3. “Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.”- Hillary Clinton
4. “Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.” – Michelle Obama
5. “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
6. “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” – Indira Gandhi
7. “When it comes to human dignity, we cannot make compromises.” – Angela Merkel
8. “Women are the real architects of society” – Harriet Beacher Stowe
9. “Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
10. “By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
11. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” – Simone de Beauvoir.
12. “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher
13. “Honor your daughters. They are honorable.” – Malala Yousafzai
14. “The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that… women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.” – Louise Otto
15. “The fastest way to change society is to mobilise the women of the world.” – Charles Malik
16. “A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.” – Melinda Gates
17. “A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.” – Rudyard Kipling
18. “Extremists have shown what frightens them most: a girl with a book.” — Malala Yousafzai
19. “The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her; but the strength of a woman is measured by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes.” ― JoyBell C
20. “A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.”- Diane Mariechild

 Proud to be a woman!