Global Events Mark International Women’s Day, 8 March

Two days ago, on Saturday, 8 March, the world celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD). The day was first officially recognised as a day to honour the achievements of women at a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1911, but it actually had its origin in a women’s march in New York City three years earlier.

Then, in 1908, 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York demanding shorter hours, better pay, and voting rights in the US. The first national women’s day was declared in the US on 28 February 1909. It wasn’t until 1977 that the UN established 8 March as IWD.

This year, events, reports, and surveys worldwide drew attention to accomplishments by women in both work and in life, as well as highlighting the necessity to continue the fight for gender equality. Perhaps nowhere is 8 March celebrated like it is in Russia, where, in 1917, it was declared a national holiday.

It was in that year that Russian women gained the right to vote. Today, 8 March is a day of tribute to all women of Russia, with flowers presented to them and road police commonly ignoring minor traffic violations committed by women. Two days ago, women of Nizhny Novgorod in the Volga region played chess on a giant carpet in the city square, using men as the chess pieces. Women commanded their every move, as the men were dressed in masks and gowns.

In Latvia, a poll shows that 53% of all citizens consider IWD an important holiday and they celebrate it, despite the government downgraded the day after separation from the former USSR in 1991. In Georgia, women who are beyond the ages of 90 and 100, received special gifts from their government this year.

But in many countries, actions took a more serious note over the weekend. In Iraq on Saturday, hundreds of women gathered or a rally in front of the Babylon Hotel in Baghdad’s central Karada neighbourhood to call for an end to violence toward women in the war-torn country.

The Iraqi call also was for women to be granted the freedom to choose their husbands themselves, as well as their careers. Following the rally, a conference on women’s rights was held in a hotel. One of the speakers was the Iraqi Minister for Women’s Rights, Nariman Mahmoud Othman, who earlier had led a delegation of women to the offices of Mahmoud Mashhadani, head of Parliament, with a list of women’s rights issues.

Also in Iraq, an NGO report, issued two days before IWD, showed that 64% of Iraqi women surveyed say that violence against them had increased since the 2003 invasion by occupation military forces.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas used IWD to give a speech at his Ramallah headquarters, calling for peace between the impoverished nation and Israel. “Despite all the Israeli attacks, we call for peace and we are keen on peace built through international legitimacy,” said Abbas, in calling for renewed peace talks with Israel.

In the Philippines, over 1,000 women on 8 March marched to the presidential palace of Gloria Arroyo. The march was led by feminist groups, who called on Arroyo to resign over allegations that her husband and a political ally sought financial kickbacks from a Chinese company in a national internet broadband deal.

Arroyo used the day prior to IWD to announce two programmes aimed at giving Filipino women technical training and to assist them in entrepreneur endeavours.

Taiwan Vice President Annette Lu dedicated the opening of the Taiwan National Women’s Hall in Taipei on Saturday. It will serve as a venue for women’s groups to hold exhibitions, meetings, and to host international women’s delegations. “Usually people think history is the story of men, hence the word ‘history’,” she said. “But in the future, there should also be the story of ‘herstory,’ and when the two words are combined, they become ‘human story’,” she remarked.

In Australia, IWD was marked by a celebratory rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park in honour of a new domestic violence law that took effect in the state of New South Wales (NSW). The law introduces a specific change regarding domestic violence that allows the state to name and shame offenders.

NSW now places a “black mark” next to the names of repeat offenders, so that such people are highlighted before the justice system. Previously, domestic violence offenders were tagged only with general assault charges. Meanwhile, the Kevin Rudd government has begun the process toward making Australia a partner to the optional protocol of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

In Nepal, women’s and human rights groups activists staged protests calling for an end to the statutory 35-day limitation in the Himalayan country for filing rape charges. Jagaran Nepal, an NGO working for women’s rights, peace, and governance, also conducted events, as did the organisation Walking for Working Women, which held a march in Kathmandu that culminated in music and performance at Three Kings Monument in the city.

In Pakistan, Working Women Organisation (WWO) organised a seminar on Saturday at the Lahore Press Club. Human rights activists presented their thoughts regarding women’s role in building democracy and justice. “Even though the situation is extremely gloomy” in Pakistan, said a WWO letter, “one thing which keeps our hopes alive is that workers, women’s organisations, trade unions, lawyers, and media never stop to raise their voices against government suppression.”

Also in Pakistan, social service organisations, NGOs, and some political parties paid tribute to the contributions of women in the fields of politics, science, education, the medical profession, and arts and literature. The Pakistan People’s Party directed all of its branch offices across the country to hold ceremonies in honour of its slain chairperson, Benazir Bhutto.

In Ireland on 7-8 March, the Irish Council of Trade Unions held a Women’s Conference in Tralee that focused on gender pay and the pension gap, support for working families, childcare, equality, and women in leadership. Some 180 delegates attended.

A motion from the trade union SIPTU to the conference centered on pay inequality. The union stated that traditional ways of measuring the pay gap between men and women does not fully reflect the real disparities. “Issues such as pensions and paid leave must be factored in,” read SIPTU’s motion.

The union called for research to be commissioned in Ireland in order to provide more accurate and holistic statistics for comparing income throughout the life cycle. SIPTU also calls on trade unions to place the pensions disparity between men and women forefront in future collective negotiations.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) used IWD to release a survey on women’s presence in leadership positions inside trade unions. The ETUC survey, the first of what will become an annual poll of member organisations on gender issues, reveals a paradox between women in trade union leadership positions and the fact that women’s job growth is sharply curbing the decline in union membership.

Eighteen European national labour centres have reported rises in female union membership, ranging from 0.2% to 2.5% over just the past year. This compares with a general drop in union membership for men. “There is significant room for improvement and it is time to implement concrete measures” for more women leadership roles in trade unions, states the ETUC.

Meanwhile, the ITUC last week issued a report on the occasion of IWD, entitled The Global Gender Pay Gap. Using statistics from 63 countries, the report puts the worldwide gender pay gap on average at 16% less for women than for men.

The report does show that collective bargaining by trade unions in some countries swerves to narrow the gap in salaries. But the report cautions that the actual pay gap may be higher than 16% when considering the hundreds of millions of informal workers toiling in low-wage jobs today.

Another report last week was issued by the ILO. Called Global Employment Trends 2008, the report says creation of greater gender equality is dependent on access to decent work and productive employment. The report states that even though women are entering the workforce in greater number, the jobs women get are generally low-paid and vulnerable, leaving them with few social protections or basic rights.

The ILO noted that the most successful region in terms of economic growth over the past 10 years – East Asia – is also the region with the highest employment-to-population ratio for women at 65.2%. East Asia is characterized as a region with low jobless rates for both men and women, and relatively small gender gaps in pay and status.

IWD is observed officially as a national holiday by 14 nations. They include: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.