International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8th a holiday held since 1980 after an empowering march took over New York’s City’s streets, demanding equal opportunity. This year’s IWD is seeking Gender Equality in every aspect of the common women’s life.
Gender Parity is a concept commonly used to talk about equal education rights, for both, men and women. Countries and international organizations tend to use it as an index to measure the unequal education rights in third world countries. The United Nations Organization has as the main goal to achieve gender parity in the education system in primary and secondary education and to evaluate and seek for this goal to be achieved
The concept of gender parity is expanding from the education system only, to every other aspect of people’s life and this year’s IWD theme is prioritizing that goal. The “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for gender equality” is a project made by International’s Women’s Day organization and it invites people to pledge for equal positions.
Seeking to encourage civilians to promote and help create a gender parity in their community. IWD website invites users to pledge to help women and girls achieve their ambitions, call for gender-balanced leadership, value women and men’s contributions equally, challenge conscious and unconscious bias and create a more inclusive and flexible culture around the world.
“Everyone can pledge to take a concrete step to help achieve gender parity more quickly” Reads IWD website. That allows citizens of the world to host and attend events in local area’s to break gender barriers.
When it comes to the International Justice system, women are woefully underrepresented. According to the Huffington Post, there have only been four female judges out of the total number 106. In the Human Rights Committee, only five of eighteen members are women, 19 out of 52 United Nations Special Procedures have never been held by women, to name a few.
Although there’s still a path to make for Gender Parity to become a fact and not a goal, there are organizations and activists all around the world seeking its accomplishment. The 30% club, for example, is an organization that measures and seeks for a 30% parity all over the world, almost succeeding in 2 countries (UK & Australia)
To pledge or participate in the Gender Parity movement you can visit this link
Sources: Daily Times