See you next year
That’s it for our IWD blog. Many thanks for sharing your comments, and telling us how you’ve been celebrating around the world. It’s also been great to hear what equality means to you (you can keep answering that question using the hashtag #equalitymeans).
If you’ve not had the chance yet, do explore the world of contraception data in our interactive on family planning.
And don’t forget to share your experiences of accessing contraceptives where you live.
See you next week at CSW60.
Enjoy the rest of IWD2016!
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New figures show a record number of women now use contraception, but globally there are still 225 million women who don’t have access to the contraceptives they want. We’d like to know what kind of barriers to family planning services exist where you live. Fill out the form and help inform our coverage.
In Malawi, Juliana Lunguzi, an opposition MP for Dedza East, a district next to Lilongwe, and chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on health, shares her thoughts on family planning and education in a time of drought with Global development editor Lucy Lamble:
Without education, that’s it for you. You are just recycling poverty at household level, as simple as that. We are recycling our poverty because if someone drops out of school, what do you do with a 10-year-old at home? Eventually they will get married so these are the early marriages that we don’t want, and you are looking at all the maternal complications that we don’t want – fistula or even obstructed labour to these girls. And these have long-term psychological effects.
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Britain’s development secretary, Justine Greening, is expected to tell today’s #genderday event at the ODI that inequality between men and women is “the great unmet human challenge” this century.
In the closing remarks, she is expected to say that addressing this inequality requires the same kind of “global revolution and commitment” as seen around climate change.
Greening will say there have been big victories, but the pace of change has not been good enough.
”Internationally we need the next UN secretary general to really pick up the baton on gender equality – perhaps for the next UN secretary general to be a woman for the first time.” (Ban Ki-moon is stepping down this year, and Greening is not alone in suggesting it might be time for the global body to pick a woman to lead it. Even Ban himself seems to agree – and he should know).
“We need women to be equally represented in parliaments around the world,” Greening is expected to say. “In Somalia, where only 14% of MPs are women, in Sierra Leone where just over 12% are women, but also Japan where only 9% are women, and Britain where it’s still only 30% despite all the progress we’ve made. We still need around 130 more women MPs here to be equal. Let’s find the 130 more. My message to women in Britain is: if you’re a great, capable woman then run, run for parliament or for local government, or to be a police commissioner, and if you know a great, capable woman – then ask her to run.”
And, like most of the speakers today at the ODI, Greening will hint at her personal frustration.
“We can’t afford to leave half our population behind here in Britain. We can’t afford to leave any country’s population behind. This has been going on for too long – I don’t accept it.”
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A poll commissioned by the Center for Health and Gender Equity (Change), has found that seven out of 10 US voters support access to abortion for women who survive rape. Released to mark IWD, the poll also showed that the majority of voters support the use of US aid to provide comprehensive post-rape care – including safe abortions – for women and girls raped in conflict.
Change has been lobbying hard to get President Obama to clarify and repeal the Helms amendment. Helms is a provision from the 1970s that prohibits US overseas aid from paying for abortions as a “method of family planning” but does not prevent aid supporting access to abortion in the cases of rape, incest or life endangerment.
“This poll makes it clear that President Obama has the support of the American people in standing with women raped in conflict and breaking barriers to abortion access in post-rape care,” said Change president Serra Sippel. “Moreover, this poll shows support not in just one corner of the nation, but in every region.”
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What does equality mean to you? Robina Biteyi, of White Ribbon Alliance Uganda, says:
On International Women’s Day, equality means we are all as valuable as each other. In the words of Keishamaza Rukikaire-Kagwa ‘equality means no glass ceiling, and we’re all standing on an even floor’.
What does equality mean to you? Katja Iversen, CEO of Women Deliver, which will be bringing together 100s of campaigners, advocates, politicians and celebrities for a conference in Copenhagen in May, says:
Gender equality means that everybody wins. It means investing in the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women, so they can live their full potential. It means leveling the playing field so we together can build a better world.
What does equality mean to you? Professor Laurie Maguire, one of the world’s leading Shakespeare academics and author of Where There’s A Will There’s A Way, a Shakespearean self-help book, says:
Equality is: when there is no further need for positive discrimination
At the ODI’s #genderday event, discussions have turned to the imperfect and yet potentially important replacements for the millennium development goals – those trip-off-the-tongue sustainable development goals – and how they can help push the equality agenda.
Jessica Woodroffe, director of the Gender and Development Network, says the SDGs fell short of the ideal, but that was no surprise given the tortuous negotiations that preceded their ratification. Here’s our women’s rights editor Liz Ford on just how tricky those talks were ahead of the UN summit last September, just in case you’ve forgotten. And for a visual reminder of all the goals, here’s our interactive.
Woodroffe took a glass half-full approach: “The SDGs need to be a tool, not a boundary but they are better than we feared. Gender equality is a goal in its own right … the principal of keeping a standalone goal was really important.”
In a way, the ball is now back in the activists’ court, or as Woodroffe put it: “Will we let [the SDGs] define our work or will we define their implementation?”
Key areas for action, she said, included redefining basic social norms that see men as primarily breadwinners and women as primarily carers, and addressing unpaid care work to make sure girls and women are not being deprived of other opportunities. She also said women’s economic empowerment was not tackled in a cohesive manner in the SDGs.
Nearly six months on from the razzmatazz of the launch in New York, the message is clear: the SDGs do not mark an end but a beginning: time now for the hard work needed to flesh out this limited global framework for development.
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From the environment to genetics and from politics to humanitarian law, here are a few of the women who have been involved in vital work to make the world a better place.
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What does equality mean to you? Holly Bourne, bestselling young adults author, whose latest novel is How Hard Can Love Be?, says:
Equality means that you have an equal shot at living a healthy and happy life – no matter what body you were born into. Every human on this planet deserves to live without fear, without oppression, without feeling silenced and invisible. This basic human right is something we need to fight for every single day, and keep fighting for, until true equality is achieved for everyone.
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Melbourne walks the walk on equality
It’s not just Valencia that’s being less than pedestrian on gender equality. They’re changing the crossing in Melbourne, too. The AAP reports:
The little green and red men will be replaced by a woman from the 1920s at a new pedestrian crossing in Melbourne.
The silhouettes that indicate when it’s safe to cross Bridge Road in Richmond will be a likeness of Mary Rogers, the first woman elected to a council in Victoria in the 1920s.
The City of Yarra and VicRoads announced the novel signals - which some have suggested look like Mary Poppins – ahead of IWD.
Rogers, elected to the City of Richmond council in 1920, was the second female councillor in Australia before becoming a justice of the peace and special magistrate at the Children’s Court.
Once installed in May, the unique signals will be in place for at least 12 months, with the City of Yarra “hoping they’ll become permanent”, according to a spokeswoman.
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On IWD it’s worth reminding ourselves of the women’s rights activists who have been killed recently in the course of their work. Honduran campaigner Berta Cáceres, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her opposition to one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects, was murdered last week. To mark International Day of Women Human Rights Defenders in November, we remembered some of women who have been killed over the past year.
What does equality mean to you? Yasmeen Hassan, global executive director of Equality Now, says:
For me, equality means living in a just world, a prosperous world and a peaceful world. Countless commitments have been made by governments to end violence and discrimination against women, but they do not always translate to action.
This International Women’s Day is yet another great opportunity for all governments to take a concrete step in this direction by reviewing their legislation and removing all laws that help perpetuate violence - or which discriminate - against girls and women.
Commenting on IWD, Neven Mimica, European commissioner for international cooperation and development, said:
One thing that stands out for me, most recently during my visits to several African countries, is how crucial the role of girls and women is to a country’s social and economic development. However, too often I also see how disadvantaged they are – and how huge the unused potential of their full involvement still is. That’s why gender equality and women’s empowerment are placed at the heart of the EU’s international cooperation and development, and are my personal priority.
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Saudi author and photographer Mona Al-Munajjed wants to counter stereotypes about her country with a coffee table book profiling successful women, reports AP.
Misperceptions about the kingdom’s women have distorted their image in western countries, Munajjed said on the eve of IWD.
“We are facing challenges but we are succeeding,” she said at a book signing.
The book, Saudi Women: A Celebration of Success, features her interviews with 40 Saudi women from a variety of fields, alongside their photographs.
AlMunajjed said she chose her subjects, in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, because they are “pioneering women”.
Women in Saudi must get permission from male family members to travel, work or marry, and are not allowed to drive.
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US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has made her IWD remarks. No word from Donald Trump yet.
Advancing the status of women and girls makes economies grow and nations more secure. It's the right—and smart—thing to do. #IWD2016 -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 8, 2016
What does equality mean to you? Aqeela Asifi, an Afghan teacher who won the Nansen refugee award last year and is a finalist for this year’s Varkey global teacher prize, says:
As we commemorate this year’s IWD, we need to understand how is achieving this equality possible.
We live in the 21st century, but sadly when you look around, our women are still oppressed in the name of honour and culture. Women are not only denied their basic human rights but are also subject to myriad types of domestic violence. Women are traded as commodities to settle family feuds or debts, given in forced marriage and child marriages. In most part of the world women are denied their basic human right of getting an education.
That is the gloomy side of the picture which needs to be changed, and as an empowered woman myself, I strongly believe the formation of a just society is not a fantasy but reality, only if there is a strong will behind the notion. If you talk development, you can’t achieve 100% results by empowering only 50% of your population. Our world can only prosper when our remaining 50% are empowered through education and access to equal economic opportunities.
Every girl and every woman should have the right to get an education. That is the only key to success, which I have been witnessing as a teacher in a remote refugee camp here in Pakistan. Progressive families where girls and boys are treated equally are economically more prosperous compared to families where girls are denied their rights.
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To mark IWD, a coalition of Amazonian indigenous women are due to march in the city of Puyo, Ecuador, calling for the cancellation of an oil contract that could destroy parts of the Amazon rainforest. In January the government of Ecuador signed a contract with Chinese oil company Andes Petroleum, handing over rights to explore and drill for oil.
The women are being joined by the members of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network and Amazon Watch. The women have already launched a petition against the contract.
What does equality mean to you? Mabel van Oranje, board chair of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, says:
For me, equality means being able to choose if, who – and when – to marry. Sadly 15 million girls each year don’t have that choice. Their wedding day is very often the day they are forced to leave school, family and friends, to become a bride before age 18. The consequences are devastating for a girl – ending her education, putting her at risk of childbirth while still a child, robbing her of a childhood. Child marriage is a major human rights abuse and it also undermines efforts to eradicate global poverty.
A fire station in Newtown, Australia, got attention for its show of support on IWD.
Newtown Fire Station wins International Women's Day https://t.co/7wJMcHXqOk pic.twitter.com/ahzS0qJ4Pw
— Melissa Matheson (@Mel_Matheson) March 8, 2016
Earlier in this blog, we reported the horrific story of a 15-year-old Indian girl who was raped and set alight on Monday evening. Sam Jones gives us an update:
The 15-year-old is now fighting for her life in hospital. The attack is the latest in a series of assaults that have convulsed India and shocked the world.
The incident highlights the prevalence of such violence, despite a public outcry four years ago that led to stronger laws to prevent sexual assault.
In December 2012, Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student was raped, beaten and tortured by six men on a Delhi bus. Singh, who was violated with an iron bar during the assault and thrown from the moving bus, died two weeks later.
The brutality of the attack prompted fierce criticism of the police, rows in parliament and protests in which tens of thousands of people took to the streets. It also led the Indian government to double prison terms for rape, and criminalise voyeurism, stalking and the trafficking of women.
However, Meenakshi Ganguly, south Asia director of Human Rights Watch, says bringing in laws is just one step towards tackling a far wider problem.
“The government still needs to do much more to ensure better protections as well as stronger enforcement,” she told the Guardian.
“Politicians have unfortunately focused on issues such as the death penalty for convicted offenders or amending the juvenile justice laws, which are populist gestures. The much harder work is to create a responsive system to assist survivors, a trained police force that will be trusted to respond promptly to threats.”
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The great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst has criticised Tory cabinet minister Priti Patel for claiming the suffragettes were fighting for the same cause as those who want Britain to leave the EU.
Helen Pankhurst said it was “unacceptable” to use her ancestor’s achievements to promote Brexit, after Patel, the employment minister, claimed the suffragettes and leave campaigners were fighters for democratic freedom.
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Oh dear. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has caused a stir by saying he believes “a woman is above all else a mother”, in a speech marking IWD.
Erdoğan has been criticised in the past for urging Turkish women to have at least three children and for railing against efforts to promote birth control as “treason”. Turkey has, at least, got quite a high contraceptive prevalence rate.
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How IWD is being marked in Cambodia, India and China
Cambodia: Cambodia is one of the few countries where International Women’s Day is a public holiday, AP reports, and its long-serving leader marked the occasion with an apparently tongue-in-cheek call for protecting men’s rights.
Prime minister Hun Sen, better known for savaging his political enemies than joking about family life, said many men in Cambodia are oppressed by wives who do not let them go to wedding parties for fear that they would eye prettier women. He said he didn’t think he was being extreme in demanding that an association be set up to promote men’s rights.
However, Hun Sen did not ignore the many problems besetting Cambodia’s women, highlighting unequal pay, fewer educational opportunities and domestic violence.
China: International Women’s Day typically happens during China’s annual ceremonial legislature. And Chinese state media are fond of marking the day with photo galleries of female journalists covering the legislature “beautiful women reporters” asking questions, checking their makeup, posing for selfies.
The Communist party-run People’s Daily said in a front-page editorial that women “cannot only help to make homes more pleasant and lively, but also contribute their valuable female perspective and efforts to the progress of the entire society”. The editorial made no mention of leadership roles for women.
Last year, the Chinese government detained five women just before IWD for planning to hand out fliers denouncing sexual harassment. The women were released 37 days later but remain criminal suspects.
India: Prime minister Narendra Modi’s call for only female lawmakers to address parliament on IWD resulted in silence because there weren’t enough women to speak.
Of 543 elected members in the lower house, only 62 are women and not all of them were prepared to address the assembly. Those who spoke on Tuesday talked about allowing women’s entry into Hindu temples and better education for girls. They also demanded renewed effort in passing long-stalled legislation to require that 33% of lawmakers are female.
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Zofeen Ebrahim has been asking young people their views about sex and rights. Paula Melisa Trad Mamod, 24, a human rights activist from Argentina raising awareness about violence against women and unsafe abortion, says:
Stop making sex a taboo for us. I hold the church responsible for propagating harmful messages with just one and only truth and just one side of the story that they are comfortable with, and using religion as a barrier for young people in accessing [sexual and reproductive health] services. They say sex is only for procreation and it’s a sin if the element of pleasure enters.
What does equality mean to you? Winfred Ongom, from White Ribbon Alliance Uganda, says:
What I think of IWD in regard to gender equality is that women should be able to enjoy their human rights so that they are able to participate in all areas of public and private life irrespective of status.
The latest from the ODI’s #genderday
Arifa Nasim, the 18-year-old founder of Educate2Eradicate and a youth delegate to the UN for the UK, just lit up a discussion about the psychosocial well-being of adolescent girls with her eloquent call for change on FGM and child marriage.
Reminding the audience that FGM is “child abuse”, Nasim said: “There is a lot of focus, especially in this country, on justice … There has been a huge push in terms of getting prosecutions … but what we are actually missing out is the psychosocial effects.” She said more support was needed for girls who stand against FGM, stressing how horribly alone they often find themselves.
Nasim had some fascinating stories of change, telling how after one education session on FGM at a school, a Somali boy came up to one of her partners, and said: “I’m from a Somali background and I know this doesn’t happen in my family.” The boy was asked to go home and ask his parents. He came back the next day, and said: “I had a chat with my Mum. I don’t like what she said, and I can guarantee you this will not happen to my sisters. Over my dead body.”
At another session with about 40 Somali men, Nasim, who works with Youth4Change, told how a fellow activist described “very chillingly and very bluntly” how she was cut.
“This very old man, who had five daughters, said to her, ‘If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have let my wife cut my daughters’. So engaging men does have an impact,” Nasim said.
She advised the audience to watch the film Warriors, about how Maasai cricket players in Kenya worked to eradicate FGM in their communities. Read Liz Ford’s story about that film.
Nasim made a strong case for getting more young people involved in global leadership.
“Malala [Yousafzai] is not an exception of what young people can be. She is an example,” said Nasim, who said she had been empowered by her school since the age of 14, but that many more young people simply did not have that opportunity.
“Around 50% of the world’s people are under 30. They are not beneficiaries … they are leaders. They are your partners … We are not torchbearers. We are torch lighters.” You can follow Arifa at @arifa_aleem and her organisation @E2Eradicate.
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In Malawi, Global development editor Lucy Lamble spoke to Virginia Kachigunda, deputy director for school health and nutrition at the education ministry, who explains why it is girls who particularly suffer when the rains don’t come.
When problems like a drought occur, it is the girl child which is pulled out of school – not willingly, but the demands to care are placed on the shoulders of the girl child. She has to go out and look for food, some of these girls are engaged in transactional sex. So we are really at a point where we need support. Girls are dropping out of school because they are trying to support the families, maybe the mothers are out to hunt for food and the girl is taking care of children at home. Or else it is the girl going out, doing some small, small business to bring money at home, so this is a situation which will eventually recycle poverty in these families.
Kachigunda says that the government is trying to encourage girls to stay in school, such as helping girls who have dropped out of school because they are pregnant to return.
This is a deliberate action that government has done to make sure that we can bring back the girls who missed their way. They can do well! I am one of these girls: I had my baby when I was in form one and I went back to school. Now I am a deputy director here. So that is happening, some girls are going back to school and excelling.
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What does equality mean to you? Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, says:
Equality means an equal world without barriers to girls’ dreams and achievements.
In her annual IWD statement, Mlambo-Ngcuka says:
To arrive at the future we want, we cannot leave anyone behind. We have to start with those who are the least regarded. These are largely women and girls, although in poor and troubled areas, they can also include boys and men.
The Scotsman is celebrating IWD by rebranding itself the Scotswoman. It also carries a poll revealing one in four Scots say they have witnessed gender discrimination in their place of work.
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Show us how you’re marking IWD. We received this photo from rural Nepal, where women marched for equality.
Rural women in Nepal march for equality
Raleigh Nepal worked alongside women's cooperatives in the state of Makwanpur to organise a march between rural communities. Marchers walked with placards bearing pledges for equality, chosen by the women's co-operative.
At the finish line - a local school - the women ran an exhibition of poetry, short stories and artwork on the theme of gender rights. Over 100 children from the school also submitted entries. The exhibition was predominantly aimed at girls but was also open to boys who wanted to recognise the contributions and hard work of the women around them.
Following the event, all submissions were threaded along a rope between the communities, encouraging people to stop, browse and spark debate.
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Indian cricket star Virat Kohli has marked IWD with an apology on behalf of men perpetrating violence and discrimination against women.
Sorry for the jerks, the cat-callers, the stalkers. Don't let them ruin it for the rest of us. Happy Women's Day 😇😇 pic.twitter.com/dZPbmwSymA
— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) March 8, 2016
In Malawi, Global development editor Lucy Lamble met Annie Namakhwa. Namakhwa, 36, has four children and lives in Neno district in the south of the country. She is struggling to survive because of the drought, and her dreams for her daughter’s schooling have had to take a back seat to the daily struggle to survive.
I had four goats which we sold to pay for my elder daughter’s school fees. She should be in secondary level, but then as things went on, the school fees are 5,700 kwacha and I just couldn’t sustain that and now my daughter is back home. We thought that if maybe we’d had a better harvest, out of that we could have been able to raise school fees and get her back to school, but as things are, she’ll have to wait a little longer … I want my daughters to get an education and get a good job that they can do with their education, and support their siblings and it’s my prayer that God answers it.
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On the Guardian’s Tumblr page, Guardian colleague Elena Cresci has compiled a list of the women we should all be reading about on IWD. From Afghan rapper and activist Sonita Alizadeh to genetic scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier, the list is full of women deserving praise every day.
What does equality mean to you? Dunya Maumoon, foreign minister of the Maldives, said:
When a woman is empowered, all of society thrives. When you give a girl the gift of education, she educates an entire community. When women are given a platform to speak, we witness transformative change.
“Despite the immeasurable contribution of women to our societies, we still live in a world where women and girls are considered inferior. Their rights are being violated too often. Their potential at large still remains untapped. Our failure to close the gender gap remains one of the greatest injustices of our times.
“Gender equality is not just a moral imperative. Nor should it be viewed merely as an obligation we have to uphold under international frameworks. We pursue gender equality because it should be the norm. Today, let us once again commit to act and speak up for gender parity so that we can achieve the future we all truly deserve.
Do men and women read differently? It appears so.
Men and women are equally likely to finish a book – but men decide much faster than women if they like a story or not, according to analysis of reading habits by Jellybooks.
The company tested hundreds of digital titles on hundreds of volunteer readers over the last few months.
“The initial decline during which most readers are lost is much sharper and earlier for men than it is for women, and this is a behaviour that we observe for the majority of books,” the company’s founder, Andrew Rhomberg, said.
“So put another way, men give up on a book much sooner than women do. Given the identical completion rates, we take this to mean that men either have more foresight in this regard or that women continue reading even if they already know that the book is not to their liking. We suspect the latter, but cannot prove it at this point.”
The thoughts of Duncan Green, senior strategic adviser at Oxfam, on IWD2016
What does equality mean to you? Here’s what Liberal Democrat peer and the former UK development minister Lynne Featherstone says:
Winning! Never again having to fight the historic power-hogging political, religious and cultural forces that have oppressed and suppressed women through the centuries. Justice would be done.
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“There’s a sanitary towel in the post for you dear”
The fight for gender is not just marches and banners any more, writes Laura Bates for the Guardian’s opinion pages. Women around the world are increasingly finding innovative ways to make their voice heard, including confetti guns, rock music, mail-outs on sanitary towels, body armour art and much more. She writes:
Green, white and purple sashes, powerful placards and large-scale marches – these are the hallmarks of feminist protest from days gone by. But while the suffragettes, and other activists, might have firmly etched such images on the public consciousness, a new wave of protesters are taking up the fight in inventive and surprising ways.
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Zeinab Mohammed Salih reports from the Sudanese Women Solidarity forum in Khartoum, Sudan.
On IWD, the group reaffirmed its commitment to work to stop women’s suffering in the war zones of Darfur, the Nuba mountains and Blue Nile states, and to spread peace in the country.
The group also called for the cancellation of laws that violate women’s rights in Sudan, such as the public order law, and the family law, and for an end to child marriage.
“The family law is one of the most humiliating and violating for women’s rights, and it violated the constitution and international human rights laws, so it must be changed,” said Amal El-Zain a lawyer and women’s rights campaigner.
Sabrin Abdullrahman, who campaigns for women’s rights particularly in the Nuba mountains, accused the government of targeting women systematically, not only in the war-torn mountains but also survivors who have fled to the cities. There, women are targeted under the public order law, which is based on Sharia law and means police can stop women because of their appearance.
“Women who fled the bombing to the main cities have been targeted by this government, they put [in] the public order law only to trail our women in Khartoum,” she said.
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What does equality mean to you? Broadcaster, writer and Labour peer Joan Bakewell says:
Equality means social justice for all regardless of race, gender or nationality. It also means that each human being on the planet has adequate housing and an adequate income to sustain their life. The world is nowhere near this objective, and doesn’t at the moment show much impulse towards it. It will be a long hard road.
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We’ve been exploring the data on how people use contraception around the world. Here’s a case study from Brazil
Thanks to everyone who has shared what equality means to them so far. You can tweet us using the hashtag #equalitymeans
#equalitymeans understanding that the fight to dismantle oppression must be inclusive. #InternationalWomensDay #IWD2016
— Sarah Forrest (@ssarahforrest) March 8, 2016
Our colleagues on the books desk are marking IWD by asking readers to share their favourite books written by women. A Wrinkle in Time, The Shipping News, Jamaica Inn, Americanah are among the suggestions so far. Add your contribution
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"Gender injustice is probably the greatest human rights violation on the planet"
The latest from the ODI #genderday event:
Shami Chakrabarti, the outgoing and outspoken director of Liberty, has just finished a sharp, thoughtful interview. She spoke passionately on policies and semantics relating to refugees and migrants (more on that in a minute), but this is what she had to say about women and rights and justice:
Having done this work for over 14 years, my view is that gender injustice is probably the greatest human rights violation on the planet. Across the world women are the group who suffer the greatest injustice. This is like an apartheid, and I don’t use this word lightly … it is global in its reach and it is millennial in its duration. I’m in my late 40s, and I’m getting frustrated. I’m impatient for change. And it’s everything: economic, political, health. I’m a believer in affirmative action and … in making that revolution happen globally.”
Chakrabarti says women are most vulnerable as migrants. “When I think what must be happening in Calais; it will be years before those stories come out. How safe is it for women in refugee camps? They are the most vulnerable. To prioritise the protection of refugees is to prioritise the protection of the most vulnerable people in the world.”
For firsthand insight into what Chakrabarti was talking about, read Nadene Ghouri’s moving report from Lesbos on women risking all to change their children’s prospects by changing their geography.
Chakrabarti had tough words for British PM David Cameron’s stance on refugees and migrants, and she blasted his use of “bunch of migrants” to describe people in the Calais Jungle.
“I hope that haunts him for the rest of his career,” she said.
Noting the rallies that have taken place to support refugees in Britain, she said politicians could underestimate people’s willingness to accept refugees, and should do more to be opinion leaders.
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What does equality mean to you? Actor Zoë Wanamaker says:
Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.
We’ve had some great contributions to our call-out for photos of IWD events around the world. This is from Manchester, UK, where cyclists dressed as suffragettes to “highlight the gender imbalance of cycling”.
'Suffragettes' campaign for safer cycling in Manchester
The 'suffragettes' cycled through Manchester as part of an event for International Women’s Day, organised by Sustrans and Manchester Bike Tours to highlight the gender imbalance of cycling.
The bicycle was a symbol of freedom for the suffragettes, who often attended demonstrations on bikes. Yet today’s research shows there are upto four times as many men who cycle compared to women.
Sustrans’ recent random Bike Life survey of over 4000 people in Greater Manchester found that fears around cycling on the roads was one of the main factors which prevented people cycling. In cities such as Copenhagen, where there are bikes lanes and other facilities to separate bikes from traffic, more women cycle than men.
The Suffragette Ride was supported by CTC and part of the Women on Wheels programme of events organised by Transport for Greater Manchester in March. Manchester Bike Tours runs regular bike rides on the theme of the suffragettes.
For more information on Women in Wheels events throughout March look up
http://www.tfgm.com/women-on-wheels/Pages/index.html
Emma Watson responds to feminazi jibes
The actor and campaigner Emma Watson has hit back at critics who have branded her a “feminazi”, saying she will not give up her campaigning work. In an interview in People magazine, the Harry Potter star and UN Women ambassador, said: “We are not supposed to talk about money, because people will think you’re ‘difficult’ or a ‘diva’. But there’s a willingness now to be like, ‘Fine. Call me a ‘diva’, call me a ‘feminazi’, call me ‘difficult’, call me a ‘First World feminist’, call me whatever you want, it’s not going to stop me from trying to do the right thing and make sure that the right thing happens.’ Because it doesn’t just affect me.”
Watson, who will be joined by the actor Forest Whitaker at a UN Women event in New York today, as part of the HeForShe campaign, added: “Whether you are a woman on a tea plantation in Kenya, or a stockbroker on Wall Street, or a Hollywood actress, no one is being paid equally.
“I’ve had my arse slapped as I’ve left a room. I’ve felt scared walking home. I’ve had people following me. I don’t talk about these experiences much because coming from me they’ll sound like a huge deal and I don’t want this to be about me, but most women I know have experienced it and worse.”
Watson has said she is taking a year out of acting to focus on feminism.
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Global development’s editor Lucy Lamble has been travelling around Malawi, reporting on the drought that has left around 100 million people in southern Africa, Asia and Latin America facing severe food and water shortages. Such crises can often result in thousands of children dropping out of school because families can no longer afford the fees when precious harvests fail. Girls are particularly vulnerable.
Lucy met 16-year-old Grace, who used to go to secondary school but had to withdraw after two years because her mother could not afford the fees. Here’s what Grace has to say on IWD:
“I want to be working and do a good job because I want to assist my family. I think this will be impossible. I’m very worried and I admire my friends when they are going to school. They don’t tell me anything any more because I don’t ask them … In the morning I go to the field, when we come back, we clean outside the house, we clean inside the house, we wash our plates, we cook food, we bath. That’s what I do.
To the whole world, I’d want to tell them that here we have no food we are starving and if there’s any help, we would appreciate it if some people can help us to avert our situation.
It's wearing a skirt so it must be a girl
Sam Jones reported earlier on how Valencia has controversially “feminised” some of the traffic lights in the city.
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What does equality mean to you? British film director Sarah Gavron, who directed the film Suffragette, says:
Equality means access – for all women everywhere – to rights, opportunity and resources. Access to education is vital as it leads to so much. At the moment 62 million girls across the globe are denied an education.
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Women in one area of Russia were given a courteous, if not slightly creepy, welcome to International Women’s Day. Last week, traffic police in Nizhny Novgorod marked the run-up to the day by pulling over female drivers to give them flowers.
Нижегородские гаишники выписывают автомобилисткам не штрафы, а букеты роз: https://t.co/OhyOGKVwi9 pic.twitter.com/YWOw5Tz0kD
— KP.RU - Н. Новгород (@onlinekpnn) March 1, 2016
What does equality mean to you? Juno Dawson, the transgender author formerly known as James, whose latest book is teen advice guide Mind your Head, says:
IWD is about recognising the leaps and bounds women are making. It feels like more women than ever are proud to call themselves feminists and there’s an increasing awareness of intersectionality: how your overlapping identities will affect your position and power in society. But it’s also a reminder that, in many ways, we haven’t achieved true parity yet. There is so much imbalance and so much to do.
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Anne Perkins, leader writer at the Guardian, tells us what equality means to her:
Equality to me means ensuring that women have the same power to make choices as men – about marriage, sex and parenthood, work and childcare, education and training. In short, women can control their own lives.
Women who want equality with men lack ambition?
Eva Cox, from the University of Technology Sydney, has been blogging at The Conversation on why feminism has failed and needs a rethink. She writes:
Our early support for increasing the proportion of women in positions of power was not driven by wanting more women sharing male privilege, but a belief that feminists could infiltrate and make the social and cultural changes we wanted. Now, the increasing numbers of women allowed to join men in positions of power and influence are mostly prepared to support the status quo, not to seriously increase gender equity.
So 41 years after International Women’s Year, Australian women are still very much the second sex, insofar as we are permitted limited share of power and resources in the public sphere, but on macho market terms.
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What does equality mean to you? Génesis Luigi from Venezuela, another young leader with Women Deliver, says:
Equality means to me recognising and embracing diversity. Equality not only means that opportunities should be available to everyone; it means that everyone can have the chance to develop their potential.
Our colleagues on the Guardian Comment desk asked female readers what the biggest issues for women are where they live. Find out what they said: ‘Black women are treated as if we are invisible’.
Amid the celebrations on IWD, a story to serve as a reminder of why there is still much to be done to end violence against women. AP reports:
A 15-year-old girl has been raped and set on fire on the rooftop terrace of her family’s home in a village outside Delhi, police said.
The attack is just one of several recently reported cases of rape against women or children in India – underlining the persistence of such violence despite a public outcry three years ago that led to stronger laws to prevent sexual assault.
In the latest case, police arrested a 20-year-old man for allegedly raping and attempting to burn the girl to death on Monday in Tigri village, near the Delhi suburb of Noida in the state of Uttar Pradesh, according to constable Yadram Singh of Bisrakh police station.
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On IWD, what does equality mean to you? Here’s what Hayley Long, author of the young adult advice book Being A Girl, says:
For me, equality for women is about all of us being treated with fairness and respect in every aspect of our daily lives. It’s about restrictive gender stereotypes being a thing of the past. It’s about feeling secure and confident in our own skins. It’s about older women being valued too. And it’s about being able to say the word ‘period’ without mumbling.
What’s the contraceptive prevalence rate across Africa? Find our in our interactive
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Meet Gift and Augustine Abu, the husband and wife team fighting FGM in Nigeria
Meet Gift and Augustine Abu, the husband and wife team who have spent most of their married life on the road fighting female genital mutilation in south-east Nigeria. Gift says: “I held the body of a pregnant woman who died in my arms on the way to the hospital because she refused to undergo FGM during childbirth.” Gift says that was her most harrowing experience working as an anti-FGM activist in Nigeria. The mother-to-be was having complications, but the cutters wouldn’t help her give birth safely unless she allowed them to cut her. “They left her for dead when she said no, and blamed me because I tried to stop them.” Hajra Rahim went to Agwagune to meet the couple. Read more from her visit.
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The Global Development Professionals Network is hosting a live chat with Lady Verma, a Conservative member of the UK’s House of Lords and a development minister, to explore ways to end violence against women and girls. Follow the live chat here
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Hajra Rahim, who was recently in Agwagune, Nigeria, reports on a new campaign to ensure the country’s ban on FGM is implemented. The campaign is being spearheaded by the first lady.
The wife of the president of Nigeria and a group of the most powerful women in the country have launched a call to action to back the recent law banning female genital mutilation.
First Lady Aisha Muhammadu Buhari and the senior political lobbying group – known as the Southern Governor’s Wives Forum – say the time for talk is over. “Action not words should be our motto.”
After the inaugural meeting of the forum last week, the women agreed to make the elimination of harmful traditional practices such as FGM a priority.
“The time for talking is over … we must remain steadfast and dogged in the drive to achieve gender equality and protect the rights of women, notably discriminatory traditional practices and laws that prevent women from achieving their full potential and contributing to society. Using the platform presented to me by my position I shall continue to strive to promote the rights of women,” said Ugo Nneoma Nkechi Rochas Okorocha, the wife of the governor of Imo state.
Last month, the UNFPA and Unicef launched a joint programme on accelerate action to end FGM in Nigeria. Attendees at a conference held at the presidential villa in Abuja heard testimony on the realities of FGM from activists Gift and Abu Augustine, a husband and wife team from Cross River state who have dedicated their lives to ending FGM.
In May Nigeria took a historic step in banning FGM. According to the latest figures, 200 million girls undergo FGM globally. In Nigeria 25% of girls between the ages of 15 and 49 have been cut.
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What does equality mean to you? Charlotte Edwards, captain of England women’s cricket team, says:
For me, equality is all about creating an even playing field, which allows everyone to participate and makes sure that everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
“Growing up as the only girl playing in boys’ and men’s cricket teams, it was tough at times, but the cricket landscape has totally changed over the last 10 years. Women and girls have just as many opportunities to play the game today as their brothers, dads and husbands, and the same development pathways that are in place in the men’s game are there for us too. Maybe in another 10 years’ time we will be at the stage where people don’t talk about men’s cricket, women’s cricket and disability cricket, they will simply talk about cricket.
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More from Clár Ní Chonghaile at the #genderday event at the ODI in London:
The event is now tackling the global childcare crisis, looking at an ODI report this month that warns of a “hidden crisis in childcare”.
There are some pretty shocking stats in that report, which warns that millions of children are without the support they need, with damaging consequences for their future, and severe impact on three generations of women – mothers, grandmothers and daughters. The report found that many women feel trapped between the need to provide minute-by-minute supervision of young children and the need to earn enough money to pay for that. That sounds about right.
The report was presented by ODI senior research fellow Nicola Jones, and here are some of the headline figures:
- globally, 35.5 million children under-five are left at home without adult supervision – that’s more than all the under-fives in Europe. Up to 70% of those are from the poorest families in the poorest countries.
- across 66 countries, representing two-thirds of the global population, on average women spend 3.3 times as much as men on unpaid work.
- when paid and unpaid responsibilities are combined, women do up to five or more weeks per year more than men. The worst country is Iraq, where women do 10 weeks a year more, while the best is Sweden where the disparity is just under two weeks.
The report looks at the role of grandparents, and grandmothers particularly, in caring for grandchildren. That has long been a big issue in sub-Saharan Africa, partly because of the ravages of the HIV crisis, while in other countries, for example China, it’s a result of young parents moving to urban areas in search of work. In China, 61 million children are left with their grandparents.
Young girls and adolescents also work hard as caregivers: in parts of Ethiopia, more than half of rural girls aged between five and eight provide unpaid care on a daily basis.
The report says we need to extend and improve care-related policies like maternity and paternity leave, and also to foster pay parity. Governments need to take an integrated multigenerational approach to social protection, and that really means looking at the extended family as a whole. And there is also a need to promote universal early childcare and to bring men and boys’ fully into care-giving agendas.
There were some sympathetic sighs around the room as another member of the panel, MP Jenny Chapman, noted that just before she began to speak she had texted her mum to see if she could pick up her boys from school tomorrow. Which reminds me …
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A march at The Hague showing solidarity with the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria, is coming to a close. The rally was organised by International Alert, Unicef and the Dutch foreign ministry.
At @UnicefNL headquarters where our march draws to a close #FutureForOurGirls #IWD2016 pic.twitter.com/9H7y47cb1L
— International Alert (@intalert) March 8, 2016
What does it mean to be a dangerous woman?
Almost a year after the Daily Mail infamously described the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, as “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, the University of Edinburgh is using the label as a way to explore the idea of dangerous women and to highlight women’s stories, perspectives and experiences.
The university’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities is inviting contributors to respond online to the question: “What does it mean to be a dangerous woman?” Responses will be published on the project’s website and Twitter account.
Sturgeon explains why she is taking part: “Since becoming first minister, I have looked to use my position to send out a positive and strong message to girls and women that there should be no limit to your ambition. Terms like ‘dangerous’ belittle the positions of women in power by implying that we should be feared, not trusted or not skilled enough to do the job. I want to challenge the status quo and set an ambitious agenda to make Scotland a fairer and more prosperous nation where opportunities are open to everyone and where everyone is able to contribute their talent, skill and commitment.”
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What does equality mean to you? Olaoluwa Abagun, a young leader in Nigeria with the organisation Women Deliver, says:
In 2014, I shared a picture with some of the Nigerian adolescent girls I work with of a female civil engineer in her bright orange overalls, deeply engrossed in a building project with her all-male-but-one team. The girls cringed. They all thought it was a ‘weird’ place for a young woman to be. To my mind, equality means that this table of ‘weirdness’ is flipped, and all members of my society cringe instead at the absence of women across several socioeconomic spaces.
Sarah Brown shares what equality means to her
What does equality mean to you? Here’s what Sarah Brown, campaigner and president of the children’s charity Theirworld (also married to Britain’s former prime minister Gordon Brown), told us:
Equality means girls having the same chances and opportunities as boys. People still say ‘that’s not for girls’ and that’s why Theirworld has launched the #RewritingTheCode campaign for International Women’s Day. We want all women to speak out against the embedded values that hold us all back.
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Bollywood actor and UN Women regional ambassador Farhan Akhtar tells us what IWD means to him:
Women’s Day was initiated as a day to focus on pressing issues that affect half the population of our world. Although each day is an opportunity to deal with these issues, we should use this dedicated day as a milestone to measure how much progress has been made since the previous year. For me, it is an honour to be part of this global movement and to stand shoulder to shoulder with fiercely committed women and men.
To mark IWD, Akhtar is releasing the song We all are on the Goodside, produced by his initiative Men Against Rape and Discrimination.
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As usual, there’s chatter online regarding the apparent lack of days dedicated to men. Ricky Gervais points out there is at least one International Men’s Day.
It's #InternationalWomensDay. Don't embarrass yourself by asking why there's no international men's day. There is. Nov 19th. You're welcome.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) March 8, 2016
We’d like to know what equality means to you. Share your thoughts in the comment thread, email us at development@theguardian.com or tweet using the hashtag #equalitymeans
#equalitymeans that your chance of being safe and successful in this world is not determined by your gender or where you're born. #IWD2016
— S (@philocats) March 8, 2016
Google is showcasing IWD on its homepage today with a video featuring women and girls around the world, including anthropologist Jane Goodall and Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Google visited 13 cities and asked 337 girls and women to complete the sentence “One day I will …”
Donatella Cinelli Colombini is something of a vineyard revolutionary, having opened Italy’s first winery run solely by women. When she inherited the estate in Tuscany from her mother in the late 1990s, she went in search of staff at Siena’s œnology school. “They told me that I’d need to wait months to have a good student. But when I said I wanted a female student, they said there were lots, because no winery wanted them,” Cinelli Colombini says. “No one ever thought that good wine could be made by women.”
The Guardian’s Rosie Scammell has the full story.
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Annie Nightingale shares what equality means to her
On IWD, what does equality mean to you? BBC Radio 1 presenter Annie Nightingale (the station’s first female DJ) says:
Equality for me means being offered the same avenues of opportunity to achieve the most fulfilment, whether it’s to become a disc jockey or to become an astrophysicist.
Equality to me means getting equal pay.
Equality means not having to use initials instead of a first name as an author, because of perceived bias against female writers.
Equality means that if there’s a Woman’s Hour, there should also be a Man’s Hour.
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A poll commissioned for the London Southbank Centre’s Women of the World (Wow) festival reveals some startling statistics about women and work.
- seven out of 10 women in the UK have experienced unwanted sexual comments in public
- almost half of working women receive sexual comments at work
- three-quarters believed it would take more than 10 years to see an equal number of male and female judges, chief executives, MPs or engineers
- one-quarter believe the gender gap would not close for at least 20 years
- 48% of women lacked confidence to ask for a pay rise (compared with 31% of men)
The Guardian’s Caroline Davies has the full story.
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Global development’s Clár Ní Chonghaile is covering the Overseas Development Institute’s IWD day event in London. Here’s her first report:
The #genderday event is well under way, with former Danish prime minister and new CEO of Save the Children International Helle Thorning-Schmidt making the keynote address of a day devoted to examining the global barriers to women and girls achieving their potential.
Thorning-Schmidt says: “As we speak, we have a situation where every 10 minutes somewhere in the world, an adolescent girl dies as a result of violence … Complications during childbirth are the second highest cause of death for adolescent girls … If we want to see a planet that is truly 50:50 by 2030, we need to start changing these numbers, stories and these girls’ futures.”
While praising the gains of the millennium development goals, Thorning-Schmidt said girls and women were often bypassed.
“Today we mark the first International Women’s Day since the creation of the sustainable development goals, and we will start with positive intent. Unlike any previous development framework, the SDGs set out a clear framework to combat gender discrimination. That’s a good thing. But we know that intent counts for very little unless translated into action.”
Thorning-Schmidt said the three critical barriers to bring change, identified by Save the Children, are violence, child marriage, and women and girls’ lack of political voice. She said that to bring about real change, boys and men, business directors, and community and religious leaders must all come on board to understand that the exclusion of girls “is an urgent problem that can be fixed”.
She concluded: “Today, on International Women’s Day, we must show these future women that they have a right to a life free from violence, equal education, and health and wellbeing. By committing to these three goals we will put into motion the changes needed for global development and together I believe we can catalyse revolutionary shifts needed in the lives of girls and women.”
The charity Malaika was set up by Noella Coursaris Musunka, a model and activist who was born in Lubumbashi, in DRC. The library she and Eve are opening today is the only one within a 100-mile radius. The library is part of a school built by Noella’s charity in 2011 and will be stocked with e-books and print books in English and French, as well as tablets and an interactive whiteboard.
What does equality mean? Here’s how Noella answered our question of the day:
Equality to me means having access to opportunity. We can all agree that girls should be able to read and write at the same level as boys, but the way to achieve this is by ensuring that girls have access to education. Gender inequality pervades Congolese society and is compounded by extreme poverty. When families can afford to send their children to school, they choose the boys, while the girls work on domestic tasks. This is why the Malaika school offers a free and high quality education to 230 girls. Any attempt to bring about equality must take into account this intersection between gender and economics.
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The rapper Eve is in Kalebuka, a village near Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this week, opening the village’s first library with the charity Malaika.
“On IWD, what does equality mean?” Here’s what Eve says:
To me, equality starts with education. Education is the key to self-esteem and opens up a world of choices. I was very lucky to be born to a strong, independent woman who taught me that nothing was impossible. Not going to school wasn’t an option, I even took it for granted in some ways, as it was just a given. But in many parts of the world, not every little girl has access to an education.
When I was young, and a lot more fearless, I thought I could take on the world in whatever way I wanted. I am forever thankful to have been brought up in that way, as it made me into the person I am today. As I got older and became more aware of the world around me, I began to understand how difficult it is for women in other parts of the world. Equality to me means that every little girl will be able to have the gift of education in the years to come.
IWD draws to a close in Australia
It’s coming to the end of IWD in Australia. In Melbourne, campaigners chained themselves to the gates of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s office calling for equal pay for early childhood educators. Van Badham’s thoughts on the gender pay gap in Australia are worth a read.
Big Steps Equal Pay Protest
I marking IWD by joining the BigSteps - Equal Pay for Early Childhood Educators protest, -- chained outside PM Malcolm Turnbull's Melbourne office. This is in memory of Zelda D'Aprano's protest in 1979. Zelda chained herself to a Commonwealth building to demand equal pay for mens and womens work. I am hoping that another 50 years doesn't go by with unequal pay , especially in the Early Childhood Sector where we are paid about 30 % less than other education sectors.
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To mark IWD in the Netherlands, International Alert, Unicef and the Dutch foreign ministry are organising a march at The Hague this morning to show solidarity with the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014. They’re also calling for more support for the women and girls who have been released or have escaped from captivity, using the hashtag #FutureforOurGirls.
Last month, International Alert and Unicef published a report that revealed how women and girls who escape to return home are often viewed with mistrust and suspicion.
Dutch minister Lilianne Ploumen says: “It is important that we do not forget about the thousands of women and girls that have been abducted by Boko Haram. Two years ago we started the campaign to free our girls. Thankfully by now many women and girls have managed to escape or have been liberated by the army. Good news, one would say. Tragically, this is not the case. Upon return they are not accepted by their families, their communities distrust them and are afraid they are ‘infected’.”
We want to know how you’re marking IWD 2016. Share your stories, images and videos on Guardian Witness.
And we also want your answer to the question: “On IWD, what does equality mean to you?” You can post your answers in the comment thread, tweet using the hashtag #equalitymeans, or email development@theguardian.com.
“On IWD, what does equality mean to you?” – here’s what Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party and its London mayoral candidate, says:
on 6 Mar 2016. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock
Equality to me means freedom, and a society that is built on the six objectives that the Women’s Equality party is striving to achieve: an end to violence against women and girls; equal representation in all walks of life; equal opportunities to thrive and be paid equally for the work that we do; sharing equally the joys and responsibilities of caregiving; seeing our lives reflected equally and accurately in the media that surrounds us; and giving our children an equal education so that the next generation leads lives free from gendered expectations.
Last week the WEP launched a campaign to end sexual assault, harassment and abuse in London
Global development correspondent Sam Jones reports on the controversial move by Valencia councillors to celebrate IWD.
Spain’s third city, Valencia, is celebrating International Women’s Day by installing 20 special traffic lights in which the green and red men are joined, or replaced, by green and red women – in skirts.
While the city council acknowledges that no single figure or symbol can properly represent everyone, it said: “There’s no doubt that the pedestrian figure that currently appears on traffic lights is masculine; what we want to see on our streets is a diverse and conciliatory language through their traffic signals.”
Isabel Lozano, councillor for equality and inclusivity, said: “We want an inclusive, egalitarian and diverse city – and one that highlights women and their needs.”
Some wags claimed the move would go down well with visiting Scotsmen in kilts, but many were far from impressed with the council’s wardrobe choices.
“Isn’t it sexist to put a skirt on the woman?” wrote one Twitter user. “Couldn’t the figure have been a short-haired woman in trousers?”
Another wrote: “Women started wearing trousers as a symbol of modernity and equality; the inequality now is that they have to wear skirts.”
Others were not convinced it was the best use of council funds. “Traffic lights with skirts in Valencia? Total stunt. We only wear skirts? Spend public money on more important things!”
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“On IWD, what does equality mean to you?” – here’s what the actor Greta Scacchi says:
Equality would mean women being valued as much as men value themselves and no longer having the need for IWD.
Where has the highest rate of male sterilisation? How many people in sub-Saharan Africa are on the pill? To mark IWD, the Global development team has taken all the lovely data from the population division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and put the figures in an interactive. You can scroll through the graphs to see which countries have the highest rates of contraceptive use, and those that don’t use much at all, exploring mini case studies from around the world.
You can also find out which methods of contraception are the most popular from female sterilisation to withdrawal.
“On IWD, what does equality mean to you?” – Here’s what the award-winning Kenya filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu told us equality meant to her:
We still live in a time where we battle for sameness. In my work, the view is still largely slanted and there are few female film directors whose work is recognised internationally. Women filmmakers have become a genre. Equality means equal attention, care and facilitation for women’s work in every industry. And equal bucks as well!
Good morning, or evening, depending where you are in the world. Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of International Women’s Day.
We are going to be covering how this annual celebration of women is being marked around the world. This is the first IWD since 193 governments agreed to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030 in the new set of global goals (if you want to know more, take a look at our interactive explainer).
Today we’re asking the question: “On IWD, what does equality mean to you?” You can post your answers in the comments, tweet using the hashtag #equalitymeans, or email development@theguardian.com.
