100 Years of International Women's Day

By Luke Balleny

A critical look at some of the good governance stories from the past week.

Major pension fund to vote against Wal-Mart board

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When war ends, the needs of women are often overlooked. And when it comes to peace-building, too, women often get shut out.

"Defying Victimhood: Women and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding", due for publication in August, examines the role women play in peace-building, and in political and security institutions.

The book’s authors argue that, for women in post-conflict societies, “defying victimhood” requires being an activist, a peace-builder and fully taking part in post-war social, economic, political and security structures, the book’s publisher United Nations University Press (UNU Press) says on its website.

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By Nita Bhalla

The U.N.'s latest report on the state of the world's 1.2 billion adolescents gives food for thought, especially on the plight of India's girls aged between 10 and 19.

The report explores a range of issues affecting teenagers around the globe, from nutrition and health to sexual behaviour, knowledge on HIV/AIDS, attitudes towards gender violence and access to education.

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This International Women’s Day, I had the privilege of sitting on the selection committee for Women Deliver’s 50 most inspiring ideas and solutions to deliver for girls and women, an annual campaign to honor the contributions of individuals and organizations dedicated to advancing female empowerment around the world.

It was a tremendous task. We received hundreds of submissions from across the globe, all inspiring accounts of innovations and ideas that are advancing women’s health, educational and economic opportunities, social and political empowerment and more. For someone whose entire career has been devoted to this field, I was newly energized by the number, quality and diversity of submissions, and grateful for the opportunity to learn about so much good work being done around the world, by organizations large and small.

I was personally pleased to see the efforts of phenomenal organizations I’ve had the pleasure to work directly with were finalists: Women for Women International’s work with male religious, military and community leaders to promote women’s safety and rights made the final 125, as did an innovative International Center for Research on Women program to protect and empower girls in Tanzania. 

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I have been working on issues related to women’s secure rights to the land they farm for over 15 years, and sometimes I marvel that my passion for this work has not waned, even in the face of what sometimes seems like intractable social and cultural constraints.  My level of hopefulness rises and falls, to be honest, but my passion only increases.  Why?  I have never met a rural woman who depends on agricultural labor for a living who did not want a parcel of land of her own.  And women who have land, no matter what the size, often speak about the benefits in terms of improved and increased nutrition for their children, and being able to pay school fees—two things I care about deeply.

Still, it’s a daunting task.  Poor women are economically and physically vulnerable.  Sometimes, it’s cultural norms which create or sustain barriers to women’s land rights, such as those related to:

• marriage (like living arrangements and dowry or bride price);
• who is able to go to public offices and meetings;
• what household labor men and women do and what time of day that labor is required; and
• who is educated within a family.

All of these things can affect women’s ability to own or have control over the land they farm.

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Shreela Flather, the first Asian woman to become a member of Britain's upper chamber of parliament, argues in a new book that "women must be central to every initiative, business project and political goal, rather than being merely afterthoughts or decoration".

The Millennium Development Goals, eight measurable targets set by the United Nations in 2000 to help improve the lives of the poor by 2015, cannot be met, and the U.N. must shift its focus to women, the Baroness Flather writes in "Woman, Acceptable Exploitation for Profit".

Flather, who became a life peer for the Conservative Party in 1990, was also the first minority woman to become an elected councillor and the first Asian woman to become the Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead.

As a member of the House of Lords she lobbied successfully for the construction of a memorial in London to commemorate volunteers from India, Africa and the Caribbean who served in World War One and World War Two.

She spoke to AlertNet in London about her career, book, and International Women's Day.

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On the eve of the centenary of International Women’s Day, I am in the Philippines, in Cebu city, interviewing women from a cemetery-slum. I am here on behalf of the Paris-based humanitarian NGO, Enfants d’Asie-CoA (Children of Asia), which provides comprehensive care for underprivileged children in South-East Asia and has for years been providing schooling and medical care for the children living in this cemetery-slum.

The women I am talking with—this afternoon I’m with Julie, Teresa, Vivencia, Cecilia, Ann—are some of the mothers of the children in Children of Asia’s education programme. These women were born in the cemetery over 30 years ago. Their children were born in the cemetery.

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Two heavy wooden doors guard the entrance to a dark room. The space reeks of desolation except for a tiny window that peeps out from the wall.

It is a scene on a postcard created by Klara Ludwig of Hungary as part of an exhibition held in Ahmedabad, western India to commemorate 100 years of International Women’s Day.

Ludwig attempted to interpret the life of women, saying that even though their lives can still be shadowed by pain, there seems to be a tiny window of hope open to them in the form of solidarity of women from all across the world.

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Sangeeta Rani is a community health volunteer in Sanjay Colony, a settlement of migrant families in north-west Delhi, India. Sangeeta goes door-to-door to inform people about the mobile clinic that Save the Children operates in the area. The opinions expressed are her own.

My name is Sangeeta and I’m 27. I give pregnant women and children under two health-related information. I monitor their height and weight, and inform communities prior to the mobile clinic’s arrival. That means people who are sick can be treated properly and get medicines easily.

There are very few hospitals around here and most of them are private. There are quacks (untrained doctors) but no qualified doctors in the community and if people go outside it costs them a lot of money. As a result, they can’t get proper treatment for themselves or their children. For pregnant women the distance to a qualified doctor means they can’t go.

Most of the time people would go to untrained doctors within the community. They would often get worse and then would have to be rushed to hospital where the doctors would tell them they were too late.

The most common illnesses affecting children are pneumonia and diarrhoea. If people don’t get the right information about healthcare, like boiling water before children drink it, these illnesses will increase.

Since July 2010, I’ve been working as a community health volunteer, and it’s really great that I’m able to give people information that helps them lead a healthier life. The mobile health clinic is free which means people are getting proper treatment now.

In the past people weren’t aware of basic health and hygiene, and that encouraged me to raise awareness. Children were so unwell and there were widespread cases of vomiting and diarrhoea. It really made me sad seeing children getting sick very often and people not knowing what to do. Now that I’ve gained more knowledge I find it easy to spread the word.

I like working with people. They come and tell me the kids have this and that problem.

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Carole Vaporean has been a Reuters journalist since 1987. Currently a commodities correspondent in the New York newsroom, she has also covered nearly every financial market there is, including equities, bonds, Federal Reserve policy, economics, and international economics. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011, to mark the centenary of International Women's Day. The opinions expressed are her own.

I had the great fortune of being able to participate in the launch of UN Women on February 24. A friend, who I had met only recently, produced the videos, music and sound for the event. So, I asked her how I could get an invitation. While that was unlikely, she said, I could volunteer. So, I took the day off work and went to help set up.

What do you know? They assigned me to usher, which meant that I not only got to seat USG's (I later figured out that's shorthand for Under Secretary General), but once everyone was seated, I got to grab a seat of my own and stay for the entire launch.

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Michelle Bachelet is the first Executive Director of UN Women, a newly formed U.N. organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. She is the former president of Chile.

A hundred years ago today, women across the world took an historic step on the long road to equality. The first ever International Women’s Day was called to draw attention to the unacceptable and often dangerous working conditions that so many women faced worldwide. Although the occasion was celebrated in only a handful of countries, it brought over one million women out onto the streets, demanding not just better conditions at work but also the right to vote, to hold office and to be equal partners with men.

I suspect those courageous pioneers would look at our world today with a mixture of pride and disappointment. There has been remarkable progress as the last century has seen an unprecedented expansion of women’s legal rights and entitlements. Indeed, the advancement of women’s rights can lay claim to be one of the most profound social revolutions the world has seen.

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Alison Steed is a multi-award winning journalist and commentator on financial issues, and she is also the owner of the personal finance website for women and families www.MyMoneyDiva.com. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women’s Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011

The fact that today sees 100 years of International Women’s Day is testament to just how influential this celebration of women’s empowerment around the world is. To think that within the last century women were being abused by the authorities for the belief in their cause – that women should be given the vote in both the UK and U.S. – when now it would seem abhorrent to not allow this. How far we have come.

But the reality is, there is still some way to go. The Lord Davies report into women in the boardroom could ultimately be the biggest fillip to women being given the same voice in the corporate world as they now have in most places in the wider world.

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Liz King is a journalist, triathlete and event organiser, who is director of the triathlon website www.TriSpiritEvents.com. She has more than 25 years’ experience in the sport, and has raced seven Ironman events to date. You can follow her on Twitter at @liztrispirit. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

Encouraging girls into sport is still a big issue in the UK. Grassroots funding is just one aspect of it, but there are other barriers to be overcome too.

For example, I was at a lecture last year where I was talking to an organisation responsible for encouraging young women into cycling. They had the money, they had the training, they had the bikes – but the girls were still reluctant to take part. Why? Because they did not want to have their hair “messed up” by a cycle helmet. I kid you not. The result was that they had to provide hair straighteners in the changing rooms to get girls on bikes. So perhaps we should look at getting Babyliss to sponsor grassroots cycling if we want to encourage young girls into it.

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Sandra Giannone Ezell is Managing Partner of Bowman and Brooke LLP’s Richmond, Virginia, office and a trial lawyer. The opinions expressed are her own.Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

I was honored to be asked to share my voice in this forum on this auspicious day that celebrates the International Day of the Woman.  I can be found most days, growing my trial practice, running my office, delivering speeches, making it rain and blogging on TheLegalDivas.com. 

By night, I am a mother to four, a wife and, life permitting, an intermittent sports fan.  I thought about what I could possibly add to this that would stand out in celebration of the distance that women have travelled to actually attain success in the legal profession, or any profession, in the last 50 years. 

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Tamara Kreinin is the Executive Director of Women and Population at the United Nations Foundation. Her experience in health and human services spans over 25 years. She speaks nationally and internationally on numerous topics related to social justice. These include sexual and reproductive health and rights; adolescent pregnancy, STD, HIV/AIDs, and sexual abuse prevention; sexuality education; children in poverty; and advocacy. The opinions expressed are her own.Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

March 8, marks the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day - a global milestone celebrating a century of women shaping our world for the better. Women have now been elected to government leadership roles in every country, and 67 countries have laws mandating equal pay for women and men.

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Annie Lennox is a singer, song-writer and performer, and the winner of numerous prestigious awards, including several Grammies and an Oscar. As a Global Ambassador for Oxfam, Annie has taken part in a wide range of activities, events and international trips, working to raise awareness about on AIDS and women's issues. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

It shocks, disappoints and angers me that in a world where man has travelled to the moon and where we can connect to people anywhere on earth instantly online, men and women are still not equal.

The statistics are sobering. Across the globe, gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women of child-bearing age than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined. Even in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, it’s safer to be a soldier than a woman. Women do two-thirds of the world’s work for a paltry 10 percent of the world’s income and own just 1 percent of the means of production.

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Sandra Dickson is a feminist working to prevent sexual violence and other forms of violence against women in Aotearoa, New Zealand.  She helped establish the counter-trafficking Poppy Project  in London in 2003, and is now a member of the Roundtable on Violence Against Women in New Zealand.  Sandra has also been involved in the Women’s Refuge movements in the UK and New Zealand, and has written a number of research papers about male violence against women. She blogs as Luddite Journo. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

In the year marking a century of activism focussed on International Women’s Day, this New Zealand feminist is tempted to take some kind of gender pulse of various key events. 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange divided global popular opinion in 2010, not because of differing opinions of how safe his international relations leaks were, but primarily due to becoming probably the most high profile man accused of sexual violence in the world.

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Gemma Simmonds is director of The Religious Life Institute, Heythrop College in the University of London. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011.

When I get asked to write articles on women’s role in the church, I know we haven’t made it yet. There comes a time in any organisation when the balance is sufficient for it to be pointless to talk about women or any other special interest group within it as if it were a great issue.

We don’t talk in the same way about women’s role in retail, say, or in school teaching or the voluntary sector because women are so well established there that there is little to say that doesn’t sound like a hangover from a previous era.

But women in the church are another matter. It isn’t a straightforward one either – which church, for a start? The Church of England has been ordaining women to the priesthood for over a decade now, and the argument has moved on to whether or not they should be ordained bishops.

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Dov Pasternak is a retired professor from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. After 30 years working on agricultural research in Israel's Negev desert, he has spent the last 10 years at ICRISAT-Niger trying to find solutions for poverty eradication in the Sahel, one of the world's most difficult regions. 

Across most of rural West Africa, women's social status is inferior to that of men. It starts with the division of labour.

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The attack on "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan has become an iconic event for many, confirming widely-held beliefs, at least in the United States, about violence and Muslim men and their victimization of women..

Women’s eNews' editor Corinna Barnard pushed back against the media storm of coverage, arguing in a recent column that claims that the assault underscores that the Middle East remains a dangerous place for women are way off-base. The real deal, she argued, is that women suffer from inordinate violence across the globe.

What is clearly on-base, however, are concerns over whether the revolutions underway in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen will actually include changes to the rights of women and address the legal infrastructures that does violates women’s rights each day.

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Sarah Brown is Global Patron of the White Ribbon Alliance and author of Behind the Black Door published by Ebury Publishing on March 3, 2011. Follow her on Twitter @SarahBrownUK. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women’s Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011

To mark the 100th International Women’s Day it is as good a place as any to start with U.N. Women’s objective to seek a pathway to decent work for women.

Back in 1911, the very first International Women’s Day was held to protest unfair wages and poor conditions of work for women.  Today, much of the focus lies similarly in seeking equal treatment, repairing injustices and opening up the opportunity for women to improve their lives in the poorest parts of the world.

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Kristin Davis, star of the show and movie Sex and the City, is an Oxfam Global Ambassador. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women’s Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

International Women's Day is special. In China, women get the day off work. In Bosnia and Italy, women receive gifts of flowers. In Cameroon, women dance in the streets. What will you do on March 8, to make it a special day?

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Seema Anand is a doctor of narrative practices and a partner at Tharoor Associates. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

In preparation for the final leg of the freedom struggle the Indians drafted the first Fundamental Rights Bill in 1931 and into it they added the Principle of Gender Equality – for 2 reasons primarily.

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Elisabeth Kelan is lecturer in the Department of Management at King’s College London. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

Earlier this year, research indicated that few of the contributors to online encyclopedia Wikipedia are women.

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Hossein Alizadeh, is the Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. The opinions expressed are his own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

Karim is a 27-year-old medical professional who until recently was doing everything possible to remain under the radar of former President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali’s secret service, while trying his best to help other gay men in Tunisia.  This included organizing support groups, teaching about sexually transmitted diseases, and arranging counseling—all while  avoiding politics.

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Vicki Hazelden is the managing partner of international law firm Walkers' Dublin and London offices. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

Men have been asking themselves this question for generations. Are women happier when we stay at home with our children or does fulfilment lie with a nanny, a grown-up career and our own earning power?  To my surprise I’ve turned out to be one of those “career women” the news media talk about and I’m not sure I know the answer. I don’t think I am alone.

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Lara Pingue is a Personal Finance producer for Reuters.com. Pingue joined the Reuters online newsroom in August 2007. Before that, she reported for a national newspaper for financial professionals and freelanced for several Canadian publications. Pingue majored in Magazine Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

A coworker recently sent me a YouTube video of a 5-year-old girl declaring to the world her intention to get a job before she gets married. It’s a funny clip, filled with the kind of urgency and drama only a pre-teen girl can muster.  But something about it made me uneasy:  Isn’t getting a job before marriage a given? Since when is this decision worth broadcasting on the Internet?

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Nicola Mendelsohn is chairman and partner at creative advertising agency Karmarama. In April, she will become the first woman president of advertising body the IPA in its 94 year history. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

I’m a lucky mum of four gorgeous children, three sons and a daughter. On the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day my hope is that my daughter has an equal chance of fulfilling her dreams as my sons have.  That she will have the strength, passion and positivity to seize every opportunity that life throws at her.

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Precious Moloi-Motsepe is chair of African Fashion International. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

I have the distinct honour and privilege to live and work in one of the most undisputedly beautiful and rich countries in the world.

A country that is beautiful beyond belief, rich in precious minerals, and blessed with a diverse range of people, cultures and traditions - I am immensely proud to call South Africa my birthplace and my home!  However, as we venture further into the 21st century the challenges still being faced, on a daily basis, by a vast number of my fellow South African women are not only numerous but daunting.

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Kate Bishop is a Women’s Rights Adviser within the Policy and Campaigns Division of ActionAid UK. Her work at ActionAid focuses on making ending violence against women a foreign policy priority for the UK Government and placing gender equality at the heart of the UK’s strategy to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters will host an International Women's Day follow-the-sun live blog on March 8, 2011.

On March 8, I’ll be joining women worldwide in celebrating 100 years of women’s activism for equality, and putting down a marker for the next 100.

I’ll be Getting Lippy in support of women fighting life and death battles for equality and rights in countries such as Bangladesh and Uganda by sending a message of solidarity to them – join me by sending your own message.

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