I hope you’re having a wonderful day pressing ahead with your activities and activism. This year’s campaign theme is “Press for Progress” and it’s just fantastic to be pressing ahead with gender parity and other issues that affect all women world-wide. In most countries, in areas like education and health, we are on par with men. However, in the world of work women continue to be underemployed and work for lower wages than a man doing the same job. We all know that economic equality is worth fighting for not only for ourselves but for our families and the economy of our countries as well.
We women are true fighters and we ought to be proud of the great strides we’ve made in small communities and continue to make on the world stage. Our rights as members of the human race is important to us and worth fighting for. As Hilary Clinton said at the UN World Conference on Women In Beijing in 1995, “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
The countries of Serbia, Singapore, Peru, New Zealand, and Iceland swore in women as their Prime Ministers in 2017. However, International Women’s Day isn’t just about women in high places. The UN theme for IWD is: “The Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives.” Women living in rural areas work very hard at jobs like tilling soil and planting seeds that feed nations and feed themselves and their families. These women themselves own no land and have no economic power. These inequalities have to be addressed.
Whether you are celebrating or protesting, or doing a bit of both, remember we are all pressing on so that we can all be free. “Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We’re not inherently anything but human.” ~Robin Morgan.
Happy International Women’s Day!