It is that time of the year again when we celebrate International Women’s Day. It is a day dedicated to honouring and celebrating women. The day highlights their trials, their tribulations and their achievements globally.
A Brief History
International Women’s Day grew out of a labour movement and was first celebrated in 1911 by Clara Zetkin, a teacher by profession and one of the leading champions of both the labour and the women’s movement. In 1910, Zetkin proposed at a conference that Women’s Day be celebrated in every country on 28 February. This idea was highly appreciated by the several women representatives who attended the conference from different countries. However, in 1913 the celebration day was changed to 8 March.
What does it mean to us?
I consider women in positions similar to mine as privileged; we have had the opportunity of a decent education, a home that was our haven from all the big bad wolves out there and a fulfilling and financially lucrative job. We are capable and have the freedom to make choices for ourselves. However, we know that this is not the case with everyone (especially women) in the world. More than 30,000 women are forced to become child brides every day, more than a million girls do not have access to basic education or a decent life. We can look at data from all walks of life, and we would witness that almost none of them favour gender equity, whether it is increasing representation in leadership, or whether it is pay parity, it has remained lopsided since the beginning of history.
A Study
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020 indicates that it will still take more than a lifetime to make equality a reality.
“None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be obtained for 99.5 years,” says the Report. The report also reveals that the greatest challenge preventing the economic gender gap from closing is women’s under-representation in emerging roles.
Let’s begin at home
As the IWD2021 theme suggests, A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. So let’s all choose to challenge! I believe that IWD is not a one-day celebration where we give women a bunch of flowers or chocolates and be done with it and from tomorrow we are back to square one. Each of us can start small and make a difference. Let’s be compassionate towards each other. Think about it, how many of us have given our maids a leave today so that they can relax on IWD? We demand a pay raise every financial year, do we raise the pay of our house helps (irrespective of their genders). I have noticed 2 ladies (NMMC workers) clean the roads every day without fail, be it Sun or rain. They do not have national holidays or IWD celebrations. We can at least try to make their lives a little simple with some amount of compassion by not littering the roads or dog owners scooping their pets’ poops. It will not change their lives immensely but it will make a difference. If we want to change the world then the change must happen from within first.
Here’s hoping everyone has a grand Women’s Day today and always.
Check out my 2020 IWD post here…