International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on the 8th of March across the world. IWD is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women in the past, present and future. It is a day when women are recognised for their achievements, without regards for divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political.
In early November, the International Women’s Day Website will be launched. It will feature information about IWD Events, the theme, the project and much more.
THEME
“Empowering Women to End Poverty by 2015”
In 2000, Government Leaders from around the world came together and agreed on a powerful agenda for a global partnership to fight poverty – the Millennium Development Goals. Central to the achievement of these goals is gender equality. Despite there being one specific goal of gender equality (Goal 3), without progress towards the empowerment of women, none of the other goals will be able to be achieved.
Women disproportionately suffer the burden of poverty, are victims of widespread discrimination and put their lives at risk every time they become pregnant.
This year, International Women’s Day is about recognising women’s contributions and realising and protecting their rights. We want to raise public awareness about the centrality of gender equality to the achievement of the MDG’s and discuss practical ways that the MDG’s can be achieved over the next 5 years.
Sometimes it is hard to people to know what would constitute ‘ending poverty’’ for women. These actions are examples of what we mean when we talk about empowering women to end poverty:
• Action taken to promote greater involvement of women in public life.
• Legal and social programs that give women protection from violence.
• Promotion of social change which encourages more equitable sharing of domestic burdens.
• Girls and women enabled to gain greater access to technical training and information and communication technologies.
• Needs and rights of women given greater priorities when public services are being reformed.
PROJECT
All of the funds raised from International Women’s Day in 2010 will be going towards empowering women migrant workers in Indonesia.
Women constitute 70 percent of the overseas migrant workers, moving both to the Arab States and to countries in East and Southeast Asia such as Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, Republic of Korea, etc. They are migrating independently, as temporary economic migrants, largely as a family survival strategy. Indonesian women migrant workers are being recruited into woman-specific skilled and unskilled jobs in the formal and informal economies and manufacturing sectors, but the largest number of women migrant workers are at the lower end of the job hierarchy in domestic work and prostitution where they suffer gross human rights violations. While it is true that women have improved their economic situation, women migrant workers in particular, continuously become victims of exploitation, abuse and discrimination as they move for employment abroad.
UNIFEM is working on multiple levels to protect women migrants. We work with women before they depart to train them in their rights as workers, employment responsibilities and basic information about contracts. We work with women once they arrive in country to ensure they have safe housing, legitimate contracts and workplace rights. We also work with women who are returning to their families after periods away and supporting them to re-enter their family life.
CONTACT
For more information on International Women’s Day 2010, please contact jo@unifem.org.au.