8 March is International Women’s Day – devoted to celebrating the achievements of women and seeking gender equality.
The campaign theme in 2024 is #InspireInclusion, while the official theme of the UN observance of the day is ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’.
It will take another 131 years to reach gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023.
Gender equality is central to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) – and a perennial item on the Secretary-General’s annual priority list.
SDG5 calls for the world to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” by 2030.
Empowering women can boost economies and help the peace process, believes António Guterres, but it needs to happen faster.
“We are promoting women’s full and equal participation and leadership in all sectors of society, as a matter of urgency,” he told the UN General Assembly, outlining the agency’s priorities on 7 February 2024.
It will take another 131 years to reach gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023.
The continued fight for women’s rights is marked each year by International Women’s Day (IWD).
What is International Women’s Day and when did it start?
IWD takes place on 8 March every year.
It began life as National Women’s Day in the United States back in February 1909. The following year, at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin called for an international women’s day to give women a greater voice to further their demands for equal rights.
It was unanimously approved by the female attendees from 17 countries, including Finland’s first three women MPs. International Women’s Day was marked for the first time in March 1911 – and the date was fixed as 8 March in 1913. The UN celebrated it for the first time in 1975 and in 1996 it announced its first annual theme: “Celebrating the past, Planning for the Future”.
