International Women's Day
“The origin of a child is a mother, a woman… She shows a man what loving, caring and sharing is all about..” said Sushmita Sen, India’s first Miss Universe, in the final round of the contest. An answer which was greeted with tremendous applause and which probably, led her to win the crown.
Challenges
Social Problems Faced By Women
1. Female foeticide
2. Dowry
3. Disparity in education
4. Inadequate Nutrition
5. Sexual harassment
6. Domestic violence and status in the family
7. Status of widows
8. Equal pay for equal work
9. Property rights
Great Women
Great襘;Women:
Mother Teresa
Annie Besant
Sarojini Naidu
Rani Lakshmibai
Indira Gandhi
Bachendri Pal
Kalpana Chawla
Lata Mangeshkar
Aishwarya Rai
VijayLakshmi Pandit
Sania Mirz
Kiran Bedi
Barkha Dutt
Arundathi Roy
Anju Bobby George
Women and Child Acts
Women, Children Acts:
Etc...
Indeed a woman’s essence lies in her innate ability to care, love and sacrifice for the other. She plays an all-enveloping character of a mother, daughter, wife and sister as a friend, nurturer, guide and partner from time to time. Emotional and vulnerable, sometimes erratic, sometimes serene, she displays a wonderful range of emotions from being patient to being extremely courageous in times of crisis.
Tormented and subjugated throughout all times and ages, women have fought their way through exploitation, harassment, and have managed to secure their rights in the public domain. In spite of continuing exploitation and injustice against women both in the domestic and work sector today, several milestones have been achieved in terms of education, freedom of choice and liberty, equality etc.With growing literacy and financial independence women feel more empowered today to assert their right to a life of dignity and self worth. The International Women's Day celebrated on 8th March is a universal day for all women around the world. It endows them with a sense of honour, dignity and self respect for being the person that they are. This day marks a celebration of the economic, social, cultural and political achievements made by women over the years.
Why Women's Day
Why dedicate a day exclusively to the celebration of the world's women?
The United Nations General Assembly, composed of delegates from every Member State, celebrates International Women's Day to recognize that peace and social progress require the active participation and equality of women, and to acknowledge the contribution of women to international peace and security.
For the women of the world, the Day is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development.
You might think that women's equality benefits mostly women, but every one-percentile growth in female secondary schooling results in a 0.3 percent growth in the economy. Yet girls are often kept from receiving education in the poorest countries that would best benefit from the economic growth.
Until the men and women work together to secure the rights and full potential of women, lasting solutions to the world's most serious social, economic and political problems are unlikely to be found.
In recent decades, much progress has been made. On a worldwide level, women's access to education and proper health care has increased; their participation in the paid labor force has grown; and legislation that promises equal opportunities for women and respect for their human rights has been adopted in many countries. The world now has an ever- growing number of women participating in society as policy-makers.
However, nowhere in the world can women claim to have all the same rights and opportunities as men.
The majority of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor are women.
On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work.
And everywhere, women continue to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as significant causes of disability and death among women of reproductive age worldwide.
The Vocabulary of Inequality
To discriminate is to treat people unequally or unfairly because of some reason which they cannot help, or which is not relevant to the matter in hand. For instance, to pay two people differently for doing the same job simply because one is a woman, or black, or a Muslim, or speaks with a different accent. There are other sorts of unfair discrimination - because of your religion, disability, age, because you speak a different language, or because of your political opinions.
Discrimination because of race or skin color or where ancestry originates is called racism.
Discrimination because you are male or female (your gender) is called sexism.
Discrimination often happens because people make decisions about other people which are not based on genuine reasons, ie they are prejudiced. Usually they think the other person is automatically inferior because of their race, religion or gender etc. Stereotyping is to assume that all people from a certain group or societal segment possess the same characteristics. If you hear someone say, "All (group X people) are lazy" (or noisy, or untrustworthy), that's a stereotype.
The aim of the United Nations is to help all people, individually and as groups, to be valued equally and treated fairly. The UN has produced many declarations and conventions which set people's rights .
Article 1.3 of the UN Charter provides ". . . fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion".
All of the countries which are UN members must let their citizens know these rights and how to obtain them. Knowing your rights is one step towards overcoming discrimination.
Legend
International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.
The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:
1908
The history of International Women's Day is a history of taking action. The event originated in 1908 when women garment makers in New York demonstrated to demand better working conditions. They worked in appalling conditions, earned half of men's wages, died prematurely from poor health and didn't have the right to vote.
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.
1910
The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
1911
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. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.
Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disasters were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.
1913-1914
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.
1917
With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.
Who Lives Longer Health
Women outlive men in almost every country. On average, women are expected to live 4 years longer than men. The life expectancy (the average number of years a person will live from birth) of men is 63.7 years. The life expectancy of women is 67.8 years.
The life expectancy of women has gone up over the past few years. In 1992, the average woman lived to be 62.9 years in developing countries compared to 53.7 years in 1970. In industrialized countries, women's average life expectancy in 1992 was 79.4 years, up from 74.2 years in 1970.
Simply, life expectancy refers to the number of years we are "expected" to live. Of course, there is no way to predict how long each person is going to live at the time they are born. But if we take an average of how long people have lived, it gives us an indication of how long a certain cross section of a population might live.
Life expectancy seems to be directly tied to income. The countries with the largest increase in life expectancy were also among the countries with the most rapid increase in their income per capita.
In 1900, life expectancy at birth throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America was 25 - 28 years. Today, it is well over 50 years. Life expectancy everywhere around the world has increased over the past few decades. On average, people live about 12 years more today than they did in 1960. It is a measure of the extent to which economic, social and political forces within a country have made it possible for citizens to avoid early death and lead a healthy life.
There are big differences between regions:
Africa has the lowest life expectancy with 52.7 years for men and 55.7 for women
North America has the highest life expectancy with 73.5 years for men and 80.2 years for women
Look at the chart below:
Among the obvious life-threatening health problems specific to women around the world is maternal mortality: about 600,000 women a year are estimated to die of complications related to childbirth.
With better maternal health care and education, this figure could change dramatically.
Look at the chart below about birth and skilled attendants:
Celebrations
International Women's Day was created to inspire women throughout the world to work towards equality. The day is commemorated at the United Nations and celebrated in nations around the globe.
Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.
Women’s Day In India
In a country like ours where society is marred by heinous crimes against women, including rape, dowry deaths, female infanticide etc. , the international women’s day holds special significance. In India too therefore, Women’s day is celebrated with great fervour. Several women’s organisations, NGO’s students and social activists participate actively by organising seminars, mass rallies, movie and documentary shows, staging of gender sensitive plays, theatre and so on. Several government and civil society initiatives like girl child education, reservation of seats in local panchayats, etc. have led to empowering the Indian woman today.However much more still needs to be addressed to make women equal citizens both in the public and private domain.The International Women’s Day thus serves as a reminder of how much we have achieved and how much more still needs to be done.