Events around the world put spotlight on
progress and failings in achieving gender equality
By Nadia Khomami, Alexandra Topping, Sam Jones,
Kim Willsher and Harriet Sherwood
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MP Dawn Butler and the
Speaker, John Bercow, with the International Women’s Day flag.
Photograph: Martin Godwin
for the Guardian
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Millions of women gathered across the world
to strike, protest and party to mark International Women’s Day on Thursday.
Trains stopped in Spain as female workers
went on the country’s first “feminist” strike, newspapers dropped their prices
for women in France, and the IWD flag flew over the UK parliament.
In India, women marched in several cities
including Delhi, Karachi and Kolkata, and women also took to the streets in
Bangladesh, Belarus, Nepal, Pristina and Ankara among many others.
It was a day of celebration and a day in
which the message was spelt out that much work still needed to be done to
achieve global gender equality.
United
Kingdom
In London, an International Women’s Day flag
flew over parliament for the first time as MPs and peers marked the day with a
debate in both Houses of parliament.
The shadow equalities minister, Dawn Butler,
said she had been inspired by the flag flying over the Transport for London
building on Monday and had approached the Speaker, John Bercow, about a flag
for parliament. He approved the plan with less than 24 hours to go, as the
House commemorated 100 years since the first women in the UK got the vote.
Bercow said: “We must not sit smugly and
think job done; there are still issues of unequal access to the labour market,
occupational segregation, women and members of minority groups scaling the
heights professionally, there is a substantial gender pay gap.”
More than 100 MPs and peers from all parties
wrote to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, calling for women in Northern Ireland
to be allowed access to abortion services locally rather than having to go to
England.
United
Nations
Women tweeted about the global #WikiGap
event, organised in partnership with the Swedish foreign ministry. The idea was
to get more women contributing to the Wikipedia website to address the gender
imbalance on the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia. The
Swedish foreign ministry said: “Knowledge is power and Wikipedia has the
potential to colour our view of the world. But there is great imbalance between
men and women on the website, like in society at large.”
It said 90% of those who added content to
Wikipedia were men and there were four times more articles about men than
women. “The figures vary regionally but, no matter how you look at it, the
picture is clear: the information about women is less extensive than that about
men. Regardless of which language version of Wikipedia you read. We want to
change this.”
Ireland
Campaigners seeking to repeal the eighth
amendment celebrated a “historic and momentous” step forward in their campaign
to allow access to abortion. The wording of a national referendum to overturn
the constitutional ban on abortion was agreed by the cabinet on Thursday.
Ailbhe Smyth, convenor of the Coalition to
Repeal the Eighth Amendment, welcomed the news as a significant milestone,
adding: “It has been a very long time coming ... We need abortion care that is
safe and regulated, in line with best medical practice, and today brings us a
crucial step forward in trying to achieve this important goal.”
Meanwhile, the former Irish president Mary
McAleese said the Catholic church was an “empire of misogyny”, ahead of a
conference in Rome calling for women to be given leadership roles by the
Vatican. “There are so few leadership roles currently available to women,”
McAleese said. “Women do not have strong role models in the church they can
look up to. [A church hierarchy] that is homophobic and anti-abortion is not
the church of the future.”
Online
Comedian Richard Herring continued his
tradition of responding to Twitter users who ask “when is there an
International Men’s Day?” This year he used his tweets to raise money for the
domestic violence charity Refuge, which supports women and girls.
Australia
In the outback town of Tennant Creek,
Indigenous Australians women and girls marched to call for an end to
alcohol-fuelled violence.
Meanwhile, the Australian Council of Trade
Unions used three billboards to demand paid domestic violence leave and an end
to gender-based violence in the workplace. The 27th prime minister of
Australia, Julia Gillard, gave a speech at the Royal Women’s Hospital, in
Melbourne, in which she said more work needed to be done to counteract
unconscious bias against women.
South
Korea
Hundreds of South Koreans, many wearing black
and holding black #MeToo signs, rallied in central Seoul. The movement has
gained significant traction in the country since January when a female
prosecutor began speaking openly about workplace mistreatment and sexual
misconduct.
Several high-profile South Korean men have
resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading
presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his female
secretary.
On the eve of International Women’s Day,
protesters in Seoul gathered outside the Japanese embassy to highlight the
plight of so-called “comfort women” – a euphemism for the 200,000 girls and
young women who were forced to work in Japanese brothels before and during the
second world war.
France
Demonstrators called for supporters,
including men, to down tools in their workplaces at 15.40 in solidarity with
their female colleagues. Research has shown women in France earn 24% less for
the same work as their male colleagues, leading to calculations that they are
working for free each day after 15.40pm. Members of the sénat suspended their
session at that time after André Chassaigne, a member of the Communist party,
requested a brief halt in proceedings.
The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe,
presented 50 measures to promote equality and combat violence against women,
resulting from a nationwide consultation, entitled the Equality Tour de France.
They include an equal pay task force and fines for companies not offering the
same remuneration to staff.
Spain
More than five million workers took part in
the country’s first nationwide “feminist strike”, according to trade unions who
said the “unprecedented” action was intended to highlight sexual
discrimination, domestic violence and the wage gap.
Huge crowds surged into streets and squares
to call for change and equality in a demonstration coordinated by the 8 March
Commission umbrella group which demanded an end to Spain’s enduring machista
culture. It was supported by some of Spain’s best-known female politicians,
including Madrid’s mayor, Manuela Carmena, and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada
Colau.
Under the slogan “If we stop, the world
stops”, protesters congregated in cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao,
Seville and Pamplona, to make their voices heard. The online Spanish newspaper
eldiario.es marked the day by dotting its homepage with blocks of solid purple
and the explanatory note: “This is a space that would be filled with a story
from one of our female reporters who are on strike.”
Spain’s transport ministry announced that 200
intercity trains out of 568 would not be operating, while 105 long-distance
trains were cancelled. The underground in Madrid was also affected.
Philippines
Hundreds of activists in pink and purple
shirts protested against Rodrigo Duterte, the country’s president, whom they
claimed was among the worst violators of women’s rights in Asia. Protest
leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda where
they handed red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of several drug
suspects slain under Duterte’s deadly crackdown on illegal drugs.
Aid
sector
More than 1,000 female aid workers from
around the world signed an open letter calling for urgent reform across the
humanitarian sector. The letter, addressed to the leaders of international
charities, the UN and donors, urged organisations to treat allegations of
sexual harassment and abuse as a priority.
The aid sector is reeling from allegations
that charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the UN mishandled claims
of sexual misconduct. The letter warned of the need for action rather than
words. “We are gravely concerned that the culture of silence, intimidation and
abuse will continue as soon as the media spotlight on this issue begins to
dim,” said the signatories. “We need effective leadership, commitment to action
and access to resources.”
Pakistan
At rallies in the capital, Islamabad, the
largest city, Karachi, and the cultural capital, Lahore, women denounced
violence against them in the country where yearly nearly 1,000 women are killed
by close relatives in so-called honour killings. Pakistani women have largely
been deprived of their rights since the country gained independence in 1947.
