Welcome to Blog for International Women's Day

The Beijing Declaration remains as relevant today as when it was adopted. The third Millennium Development Goal – to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment – is central to all the rest. When women are denied the opportunity to better themselves and their societies, we all lose. On this International Women’s Day, let us look critically at the achievements of the past 15 years so we can build on what has worked, and correct what has not. Let us work with renewed determination for a future of equal rights, equal opportunities and progress for all. -Secretary General of the U.N., Ban Ki-moon on “Secretary General’s Message for International Women’s Day 2010“

Today is International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day isn’t just a day to celebrate women — it’s a day to celebrate their progress of equal rights and what it means for women of the future.

The history of International Women’s Day began in 1975, where the United Nations celebrated International Women’s Year. It was finally declared in 1977 that March 8th would be the official “International Women’s Day,” and cited the following two reasons for this observation:

1. To recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women
2. To acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security. -from the U.N. WomenWatch website

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the U.N., has this to say about International Women’s Day:

Video available in Arabic | Chinese | English | French | Russian | Spanish
and transcripts available in those same languages here

Today, GAB is asking you to participate in our first-time “Blog for International Women’s Day,” where we will discuss equal rights and equal opportunity for all (which is the U.N. theme for International Women’s Day [IWD]). What does equal rights mean to you? Alternatively or additionally, you can also describe particular organization, person, or moment in history that helped to mobilize a meaningful change in equal rights for all.

We will have five live-blogs throughout the day, blogging what you (and by you I mean the blogs that have signed up for Blog for IWD) have said about equal rights for all. Also, each of the GAB editors have written mini-Global Feminist Profiles for the event where we describe people who we thought have made progress in the fight for equal rights. You can also tweet your answers by using the hashtag #BlogforIWD.

For a complete listing of blogs participating in “Blog for IWD,” go to the blog directory here.

And to kick-start our event, we’re going to leave you with two videos until our first liveblog at 9:30am CST, one from NATO and the other from Planned Parenthood, that address why equal rights are important to them.

*Note: closed-captioning are in each of the videos.

From NATO

From Planned Parenthood

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