How will you mark the day?
Celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women.
Yet let's also be aware progress has slowed in many places across the world, so urgent action is needed to accelerate gender parity.
#IWD2016 #PledgeForParity
CELEBRATE TAKE ACTION
The International Women's Day 2016 is upon us. This year the theme has two parts to it, one - to celebrate women all across the world and two - to make a pledge for gender parity. For the UN, he 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for gender equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights.
So this really seems to be a day to think about what will you do? It is the committed actions of each one of us at our own levels that will eventually make the bigger difference.
Let’s look at the history of this day - where it all started. In its various incarnations, possibly starting out as a communist holiday to a U.N.-sponsored event, International Women's Day now has been celebrated around the world for over 95 years.
Inspired by an American commemoration of working women, the German socialist Klara Zetkin organized International Women's Day (IWD) in 1911. On March 19, socialists from Germany, Austria, Denmark and other European countries held strikes and marches. Russian revolutionary and feminist Aleksandra Kollontai, who helped organize the event, described it as "one seething trembling sea of women."
As this nascent annual event developed, it took on the cause of peace as well as women's rights. In 1915, Zetkin organized a demonstration in Bern, Switzerland, to urge the end of World War I. Women on both sides of the war turned out.
Both Zetkin and Kollontai took part in the most famous International Women's Day—the March 8, 1917, strike "for bread and peace" led by Russian women in St. Petersburg. The IWD strike merged with riots that had spread through the city from March 8–12. The February Revolution, as it became known, forced the Czar Nicholas II to abdicate. (Russia switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, which moved the dates of the February revolution [Feb. 24–28, old style] to March.)
Kollontai, a minister in the first Soviet government, persuaded Lenin to make March 8 an official communist holiday. During the Soviet period, the holiday celebrated "the heroic woman worker." Today it is still a Russian holiday—celebrated in the fashion of Mother's Day with flowers or breakfast in bed—in which men show appreciation for the women in their lives.
IWD was commemorated in the United States during the 1910s and 1920s, but then dwindled. It was revived during the women's movement in the 1960s, but without its socialist associations. In 1975, the U.N. began sponsoring International Women's Day.
International Women's Day is now an official holiday in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. In addition, events are held all over the world.
Some of the issues the U.N. and International Women's Day have focused on include the following:
The World Economic Forum predicted in 2014 that it would take until 2095 to achieve global gender parity. Then one year later in 2015, they estimated that a slowdown in the already glacial pace of progress meant the gender gap wouldn't close entirely until 2133.
About 25,000 brides are burned to death each year in India because of insufficient dowries. The groom's family will set the bride on fire, presenting it as an accident or suicide. The groom is then free to remarry.
In a number of countries, women who have been raped are sometimes killed by their own families to preserve the family's honour. Honour killings have been reported in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries.
According to UNICEF, 100 million to 140 million girls and women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation. Today, this practice is carried out in 28 African countries, despite the fact that it is outlawed in a number of these nations.
Rape as a weapon of war has been used in Chiapas, Mexico, Rwanda, Kuwait, Haiti, Colombia, and elsewhere.
As awareness, education and now the advent of social media grows—more and more women are joining the movement to take heed. We need to be aware that progress for gender parity has slowed in many places—so urgent action needs to be taken. Let’s take the pledge today for gender parity and make that difference.
• help women and girls achieve their ambitions
• challenge conscious and unconscious bias
• call for gender-balanced leadership
• value women and men's contributions equally
• create inclusive, flexible cultures
Let’s also mark this day by celebrating each and every woman around you 9starting with yourself). Whatever it is that makes you feel good, it means getting together with the girls for breakfast, for a coffee or a drink or simply sending them a message or even a post on Facebook. Every little bit matters as long as you are willing to do it. Let’s do something this Women's day (as L’Oréal would say) because you're worth it!!!
(Source : www.infoplease.com,www.internationalwomensday.com )