A worldwide holiday honoring women’s social, economic, cultural, and political accomplishments is known as International Women’s Day (IWD). A call to action for accelerating gender parity is also made on this day. Groups assemble to celebrate women’s accomplishments or march for women’s equality, which causes significant activity worldwide.
IWD, which is observed every year on March 8, is one of the most significant days of the year to:
- Honor women’s accomplishments
- Call for constructive change through education and awareness raising for women’s equality.
- Promoting women advocate for swifter gender equity and generate money for organizations that serve women
International Women’s Day 2023 Theme
The global campaign theme for IWD 2023 is #EmbraceEquity.
We can all eliminate gender stereotypes, denounce prejudice, call out discrimination, and work to be inclusive. Change is driven by collective activism. We can all embrace equity, from small-scale movements to global momentum.
And to genuinely embrace fairness, one must have a strong conviction about, appreciation for, and desire for difference as a vital and beneficial aspect of life. Understanding the path needed to attain women’s equality is necessary to embrace equity.
In honor of International Women’s Day, let us dive into not just international women’s day history, but women’s history and learn some interesting facts.
- International Women’s Day originated more than 100 years ago
The now-defunct Socialist Party of America planned the first National Woman’s Day on February 28, 1909, which fell on the last Sunday in February. Clara Zetkin, the head of the Social Democratic Party’s “Women’s Office” in Germany, presented the idea of an international International Women’s Day in 1910 so that people all over the world might celebrate at the same time.
- The United Nations officially Adopted IWD in 1975
The inaugural International Women’s Day was observed on March 8th, 1975, the United Nations designated it as International Women’s Year. Since then, the UN has taken over as the event’s main sponsor and has pushed additional nations to observe the holiday and its theme of honoring “ordinary women who have played an outstanding role in the history of their countries and communities” by doing acts of courage and resolve.
- Women spend more time on children and housework than men
It should be no surprise that women still devote more time to childcare and housekeeping than men do. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, women who are 15 and older spend 5.7 hours per day taking care of household duties, children, and the elderly, compared to males who spend 3.6 hours per day doing the same.
- Black Women have the highest labor force participation rate of all women.
Black women in the United States participate in the workforce at the greatest rate of any group of women. The labor force participation rate for Black women in 2019 was 60.5%, compared to 56.8% for White women, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Their labor force participation rate was 58.8% even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as opposed to 56.2% for all women in 2020.
- One in three women worldwide are victims of physical or sexual violence
Despite the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, an estimated 736 million women worldwide still experience physical or sexual abuse every year. According to estimates made by the WHO, 27% of women between the ages of 15 and 49 who have been in a relationship worldwide say their intimate partner has physically or sexually abused them in some way.
- Transgender Women are more likely to face violent crime.
According to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, transgender women are more than four times as likely as cisgender women to become victims of violent crime. In addition, compared to less than one in ten cisgender women, one in four victimized transgender women believed the occurrence to be a hate crime.
- The Billboard Hot 100 Year-End charts comprised 21.6% of women artists.
According to the annual “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?” report by the University of Southern California, women made up 21.6% of all artists on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Charts for the preceding nine years, but just 20.2% of artists on the chart in 2020. According to the data from the 2020 report, there hasn’t been a consistent rise in the proportion of female performers in popular music in almost ten years.
