Resources - - Celebrating International Womenโs day 2010 Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all

Celebrating International Womenโs day 2010 Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all

Essays

Women Living in Extraordinary Times

Source: Reuters

Reuters invites you to join us in celebrating International Women's Day and the role of women in bringing about positive change in the world. To mark this occasion Reuters has created a slideshow of women from across the globe, living in extraordinary times.

See photo slide show from: http://online.thomsonreuters.com/womensday/

A man in a womanโs world: my experiences in gender equality! Devendra Tak, Communications & Media Manager, CIVICUS

In India, and living for many years in Mumbai, I saw how it was relatively safer for women to travel even at odd hours in public transport as compared to New Delhi or even that they fared better in the workplace. When I climb up to the fort in my native city of Jodhpur, I see the handprints of queens on the fortโs wall that have committed sati and jumped into the funeral pyres of their husbands.

Celebrating Women: Human rights activist empower the next generation Every Human Has Rights Campaign, CIVICUS

On 8 March, International Womenโs Day, the world will celebrate women and their achievements -- past, present and future. This is one day to recognise the work that women the world over do to improve their lives, the lives of their families and the lives of their communities. Women like Monica Carrilo. Monica is a human rights activist in Peru who works with some of her countryโs most neglected citizens, young Afro-Peruvian women, to empower them to build a better future.

Gender Justice instead of Gender Apartheid

Sylvia Borren, GCAP IFT Co-chair

Fifteen years after the Beijing Platform for Action thousands of women from all ages, organisations and backgrounds are in New York to challenge the member states within the United Nations about the lack of progress made regarding the position of women in the world. Fighting for womenโs rights -- or for gender justice as I prefer to call it -- has been a slow and painful process. Governments come to the Commission on the Status of Women UN meeting with optimistic stories, but the womenโs movement is much more critical.

Why gender equality needs sanitation and water for all โ and vice versa!

Steve Cockburn, International Campaign Coordinator, End Water Poverty

For those of us campaigning for the eradication of poverty, International Womenโs Day reminds us not only of the past, present and future struggles for gender equality, but the inherent interconnectedness between gender justice and our broader development goals. And for those of us working to increase access to clean water and safe sanitation through the international End Water Poverty campaign, the links could not be clearer. The absence of these most basic rights for so many people is both cause and effect of gender inequality.

Women โ Making the Difference

Ashna Khan, Programme Officer for Families and Population Activities Centre (FAMPAC), FIJI

Traditionally, men went out to work and earn for the family while women stayed home to perform their roles. Over decades, a womanโs responsibilities and duties have evolved. In most cases, women still bear almost every responsibility for meeting the basic needs of their family. When there is less food in the house, it is a woman who will forego her meal to feed the rest of the family, especially her children.

Importance of education for โwomen of tomorrowโ

Surbhi Saraswat, Voluntary Association of Agriculture, General Development, Health and Reconstruction Society (VAAGDHARA) India

'Education for empowerment' has been a handy slogan for the government while promoting the rights of a girl child. But what does 8 March (International Women's Day) mean for millions of girls in India who cannot attend or finish school because they have to graze cattle, labour in the house or fields, or are sexually harassed and humiliated by their teachers/principals?Although admission of girls in schools has gone up significantly over the past few years, is it any wonder that attendance and retention rates are low? According to a recently concluded research study 'Gender Discrimination: Impact on Lives of Girls in School in four States (Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Delhi)', large numbers -- over 50 per cent -- drop out of schooling before or at the point of transition from Class 5 to Class 6. The reasons are the same: they have to look after siblings; they have to do household chores; or work to support the family.

Resolutions and Statements

Statement of Tiye International on the fifteen-year review of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action at the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York

Source: CIVICUS

Tiye International, the Umbrella NGO of National Associations of Black Immigrant and Refugee Women and Youth in the Netherlands, in Special Consultative Status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations, welcomes the fifteen-year review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference of Women and the outcomes of the twenty-third Special session of the General Assembly on Beijing +5 which will be conducted by the fifty-fourth session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York from 1-12 March, 2010.

Read more from: http://civicus.org/media/tiye.pdf

Kampala: statement on the occasion of International Womenโs Day, 2010

Source: Uganda Land Alliance (ULA)

As the entire world celebrates International Womenโs Day, the Uganda Land Alliance (ULA) wishes to express deep concern over continued violation of womenโs rights, particularly the right to own land. This happens despite international legal provisions stipulating absolute equality of the human fold irrespective of sex. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for example states in part that โAll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rightsโฆโ, but in Uganda today, this provision seems to have been blatantly ignored.

Read more from: http://civicus.org/media/ula

International Women's Day Solidarity Resolution

Dr. V. Mohini Giri, India

A century after that first call for an International Women's Day, on this March 8th we remember the second International Conference of Socialist Women held at Copenhagen in 1910 where Clara Zetkin, great pioneer of the socialist women's movement, proposed that women throughout the world should focus on a particular day each year to press for their demands. We remember those 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, who supported Zetkin's resolution that read "the Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women's Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women's suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women's question according to Socialist precepts. The Women's Day must have an international character." We remember the first celebration of International Women's Day in 1911 in the words of the revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai about its observance in Germany, "โฆone seething trembling sea of women...Men stayed home with their children for a change and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings.โ

Women Strive for Peace, Solidarity and Rights

Source: WIDE

On the occasion of International Womenโs day, the third World March of Women and the 25th Anniversary of the WIDE Network, a monumental sculpture will be inaugurated in Brussels. Chloเน Coomans, a creator of the statue, together with WIDE and Le Monde selon les femmes (WIDEโs Belgian platform) will officially open the exposition on the 6th of March. The giant metal sculpture symbolically represents women, who strive for peace, solidarity and respect for womenโs human rights. Chloเน Coomans has dedicated her work to the women victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Read more from: http://civicus.org/media/wide.pdf

News

Womenโs Empowerment Lifts Obstacles to Achieving Development Goals

Source: UN News

More than a decade after world leaders agreed to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, their empowerment remains a necessary element in attaining development targets, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"Until women and girls are liberated from poverty and injustice, all our goals - peace, security, sustainable development - stand in jeopardy," Mr. Ban said to the Commission on the Status of Women, as the United Nations marked International Women's Day, which is observed annually on 8 March.

Women judges barred from influential Egypt court

Source: Yahoo News

The Council of State's association voted by an overwhelming majority against appointing women as judges in the council, Egypt's MENA news agency said. "Three-hundred and eighty judges took part in the general assembly and voted, with 334 rejecting the appointment of females to judicial posts and 42 agreeing, with four abstentions."

Indian women UN peacekeepers hailed in Liberia

Source: CNN

They are trained in sophisticated combat tactics and weaponry, crowd and mob control and counter-insurgency. They patrol the streets of the Liberian capital, expected to keep the peace after years of war.

Most of them are also mothers and form an all-women unit from India, policing in a country where a 15-year conflict was characterised by sexual violence. Rape, according to the United Nations, remains the No. 1 crime reported to police in Liberia.

The Indian women were pioneers, the unit's experience in Liberia an experiment of sorts for the United Nations.

Global Media Monitoring Project 2010-Preliminary Findings

Source: WURN

This is the moment of truth for thousands around the world who have been engaged in the process since the GMMP began in 1995, and for the thousands of volunteers whose selfless commitment has made GMMP 2010 a reality. It is also a watershed moment for those concerned about the gender dimensions of media wanting to take stock of the progress made during the past decade and a half and to know how much more work lies ahead.