International Women’s Day

Shot of the Day

Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org.
Israeli-Palestinian women demanding more jobs, International Women’s Day, Tel Aviv, Isreal, 8/3/2008

Today is International Women’s Day, an event I understand is about a hundred years old. It is celebrated throughout the world but very much ignored in the US where we have a high standard of equality between the sexes. I am not saying we have achieved the standard, but a standard we have and laws to back it up. Unfortunately this is not true for a very large portion of women around the world. That is why I think the document produced by the UN refugee agency UNHCR on Thursday for the protection of woman is important. There needs to be a standard for the treatment of women in armed conflict and refugee situations. There is not and in the global hot spots of the world it is the women and children who are most venerable and yet unprotected.


Before I began the job as webmaster for Good News Now I too would have ignored International Women’s Day and perhaps even like pro-family activist Phyllis Schlafly, spoken out against it, decrying it as a feminist agenda. Although there are supporters of the event I do not support, I do support putting pressure nations to enact and enforced laws that make rape and sexual enslavement a crime punishable by imprisonment. Call me radical. Call me a feminist. Read the international news and I think you will begin to agree with me that there is a need to celebrate women and make it a cause to see that in the poorest of nations they are not the poorest of poor, voiceless without hope or a means to care for their families. If you can look at the situations like Kenya, DR Congo where the UNHRC is on the frontlines caring for those displaced by violence and say we not need to do anything for women to improve their situation then I am afraid you are blind and without heart. If you can say that in the US under the best of circumstances a single women head of household makes as much to support her family as a man than you are ignorant or lying to yourself. Does gender inequality matter? Yes, it does to half the population of the world.

I was very pleased to see that First Lady Laura Bush and USAID believe we need to do more to help women.

I challenge you to read the World Relief and Humanitarian Aid section of Good News Now daily and see if you don’t begin to agree with me. In a world where so much is wrong and life is so difficult to navigate there are people who care, organization that man the frontlines and government s who strive to uplift and protect all of the people. That is a cause worthy of celebration.

Articles on International Women's Day posted on Good News Now.



International Women's Day: UNHCR launches handbook for protection of women



International Women's Day protests highlight violence, inequality



Young, old: over 1,000 Afghan women mark International Women's Day in Kandahar



First Lady Honors Women at International Women's Day Event



International Women's Day: Code for 'Advancing Radical Feminism Around the Globe'