Today is International Women’s Day. But why does it matter? Why do we still celebrate International Women’s day?
Well, that’s because unfortunately we are not yet at the stage where women are treated as equals. I am looking forward for the year we will choose to remove this date from the calendar. When this celebration date won’t make sense anymore.
Today we celebrate all women, in all their diversities. We celebrate those who came before us, those who stand beside us now, and those who will come after.
It’s a time to celebrate the achievements of women, whether social, political, economic or cultural and remind all that “Women’s rights are human rights!”
Some Facts
- 87,000 women are killed every year just because they are women. Of those, 50,000 are killed by their male partners or family members – and those are only the deaths we know about
- 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men
- 18% is the size of United States’ gender pay gap
- 45 countries do not have specific laws against domestic violence
- 35% of women globally have experienced sexual or physical violence
(source: https://iwda.org.au/take-action/international-womens-day/)
Some inspiration from Nordic strategies to close gender gap
Nordic countries have made most progress within closing gender gap in society, workplace and leadership.
Here are some of the strategies and policies they implemented to achieve that:
- equal access to education, health care and welfare to all women, men, girls and boys
- equal opportunities to men and women in the labor market
- shared parental leave benefits (ex: 3 months parental leave to each parent and the remaining period to be decided by the couple)
The equality, among other factors as low corruption, high trust in the system, good welfare to its citizens, are some of the key factors that make the Nordic countries some of the happiest people in the world.
Equality at home
With Covid-19 pandemic, kids having to be home-schooled, parents working from home and in many countries having lock-down, the workload increased in disproportional ways to all women.
Somehow it is expected that women would be able to:
- carry their full-time job (from home),
- home-school the kids,
- prepare all meals to the family (now even lunch and snacks during her working day),
- keep the house in order and
- be a loving wife and mother
Needless to say, this is absolutely un-sustainable.
The amount of stress, anxiety and feeling overwhelmed skyrocket among women in 2020.
We need to spread the message that in a family unit everyone has responsibilities and chores (even the kids). It’s important to have a family meeting and assign responsibilities to all. Check out tips on how to approach this task here.
Equality at work and in leadership
Nordic countries have been for several years leading the Global Gender Equality Index. Iceland has closed almost 88% of its gender gap and increased its lead over second-ranked Norway.
Finland had made huge progress in closing the gender gap in politics when Sanna Marin was elected as country’s prime minister.
Although we have seen improvement on women in leadership positions in politics, they still represent less the ¼ of all positions.
So, yes! We are still celebrating International Women’s Day as we still have a long road to reach global gender equality.
Celebrate today with the #choosetochallenge in your posts and start by taking a family meeting and re-setting the rules in your own home.
