Tomorrow, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. IWD is a worldwide event that celebrates women’s achievements – from the political to the social – while calling for gender equality. IWD 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 countries and communities.
The IWD’s roots can be traced to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding voting rights, better pay and shorter working hours. A year later, the first National Woman’s Day was observed in the US on February 28, in accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. In 1910, Clara Zetkin – leader of the ‘women’s office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany – tabled the idea of an IWD.
She suggested that every country should celebrate women on one day every year to push for their demands. A conference of more than 100 women from 17 countries agreed to her suggestion and IWD was formed. In 1911, it was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19. In 1913, it was decided to transfer IWD to March 8, and it has been celebrated on that day ever since. The UN officially recognised the day in 1975.
This year, the IWD theme is rather easy to guess. Women stand at the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis, as healthcare workers, caregivers, innovators, community organisers and as some of the most exemplary and effective national leaders in combating the pandemic. The crisis has highlighted both the centrality of their contributions and the disproportionate burdens that women carry.
This year’s theme for the International Women’s Day, ‘Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world’, thus celebrates the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also aligned with the priority theme of the 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, “Women in public life, equal participation in decision making”, and the flagship Generation Equality campaign, which calls for women’s right to decision-making in all areas of life, equal pay, equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, an end to all forms of violence against women and girls, and health-care services that respond to their needs.
No country has, however, achieved gender equality. Legal restrictions have kept 2.7 billion women from accessing the same choice of jobs as men. Less than 25 percent of parliamentarians were women, as of 2019. One in three women experience gender-based violence, still. A gender pay gap persists across the globe - women earn 23 percent less than men and nearly 60 percent of women around the world work in the informal economy, earning less, saving less, and at greater risk of falling into poverty.
Women are still not present in equal numbers in business or politics. According to the World Economic Forum, the gender gap won’t close until 2186. In 2019, women effectively worked ‘for free’ from November 14 until the end of the year because of the gender pay gap.
For the past couple of years, women’s rights have dominated the news, following a global reckoning on sexual misconduct. Following the outpouring of allegations against Harvey Weinstein and other prominent men in power, the #MeToo movement gave a voice to women on the abuse and harassment they suffer in film, fashion, music, politics and art. The world must collectively address the issue of physical and sexual violence against girls and women.
Sri Lanka has made a lot of progress over the years in terms of women’s empowerment. In fact, Sri Lanka produced the world’s woman Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, way back in 1960. Since then, Sri Lanka has produced a woman President and many other women politicians as well as women leaders in many other fields such as academia, business, education and civil society. However, the level of women’s representation in politics from Local Government to Parliament is less than five percent. It is extremely difficult to break into politics if a woman is not politically connected (father, brother or uncle has to be a politician generally).
It is important to get more women involved in grassroots level politics as they have an intimate knowledge of local development and social welfare needs. An attempt was made earlier to raise the women’s representation in Local Government politics to 25 percent, but we feel that the formulators of the next Constitution should enshrine this as an irreversible right of all Sri Lankan women.
In Sri Lanka, there is hardly any discrimination against the girl child in terms of education. In fact, girls are among some of the best performers at recent examinations. However, we need more girls to get into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects at all levels from the school to the university. The emergence of Covid-19 has also shown us the importance of having more nurses who are qualified to operate the latest life-saving machinery.
We also need more women in the boardrooms. There are very few women holding top positions in business and commerce not only in Sri Lanka but also worldwide. This is a pathetic state of affairs that needs corrective action. Thus in addition to STEM, more girls and women should be encouraged to follow business and commerce studies. Thus the glass ceiling that still prevents the onward march of women in many spheres must be shattered. Women must challenge themselves to climb higher and higher.