International Women's Day 2021 -Choose To Challenge

It's International Women's Day on March 8th. Happy Women's Day to each and every women out there. At this time, I thought it would be appropriate to share some significant data on women's empowerment and gender parity. We, women have come a long way, but yet the scale is not balanced. Empowerment has not permeated into all the nooks and corners of the world, and neither has it shaken hands with all the women in the world. As we celebrate our achievements, with gratitude to all the great women who have fought in the past for various reasons and upliftment, paving a path for us, it is also more important to shoulder the responsibility of maintaining and adding value to it.  

The creamy layer might look like all is well with respect to gender equality. But the truth is bitter and needs a tremendous effort to reach hundred percent parity. The world economic forum's report in 2020 on gender parity says we would never see gender parity in our lifetimes! Not likely by our children, either. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 brought out the truth however bitter it might be! Yes, gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years!

Gender parity is essential for economical and social development. Leaving one half of the world's population would have a solid impact on the growth, competitiveness and future-readiness of economies and businesses worldwide. The Global Gender Gap Report benchmarked 153 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four areas - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. The 2020 report also studied the gender gap prospects on professions in the future.

The representation of women in politics has increased but not on the leadership levels. The report says that gender parity in education would be achieved in 12 years, whereas, in political arena it would take 95 years to close the gender gap. 

Education parity has reached 96.1% and health and survival 95.7%, but when it comes to economic and opportunities the picture is not cheering. Progress in this dimension has regressed bringing the gender parity to a lowly 57.8%. This means a humongous number of 257 years before gender parity can be reached. That would be three, four generations from us. 

While women seem to have occupied almost every field, what contributes to this deteriorating figure? Well, women occupy jobs which are mostly automated, women don't occupy positions where income growth is pronounced, women also face the problem of insufficient care infrastructure and access to capital.

Looking into the future reveals that closing the gender gap is challenged by under representation of women in emerging roles. Only 12% women are cloud computing professionals. Engineering has 15% women and Data and AI is represented by 26% women. These should be addressed by diverse hiring, providing STEM education opportunities for women and creating inclusive work culture.

In parliamentary positions women have occupied only 25% of positions, and that dives even lower to 21% when it comes to ministerial positions.  The report says there were no female head of states in 85 countries.

And, here comes a pricking shock, in 72 countries women are not allowed to open bank accounts or to obtain credit. There is no country where men spend as much time as women in unpaid labor!!

Given all these facts, in the 21st century where women have reached space, have subdued the oceans, we still have a long long way to go. As we all work towards gender equality and women upliftment, let's also take a tiny step, together with the many people internationally who are pledging to act towards hundred percent gender equality. 

International Women's Day organization gives a theme each year to campaign for Women's rights, parity, empowerment,  to put in a nut shell, to celebrate women. The theme for the year 2021 is 'Choose To Challenge'. We all can choose to challenge gender inequality and gender bias. So let's choose to pledge for what this challenge entails,  and work on it throughout the year. 

Raise your hand high to show that you are in and that you choose to challenge gender bias and inequality. Strike the ChooseToChallenge pose and share in social media with the following tags.

#IWD2021 #ChooseToChallenge

I choose to challenge gender stereotypes, choose to voice for gender equality, for respect to every human being. Would you join, men and women out there, to create a inclusive world for our generations to come?

References:

International Women's Day

World Economic Forum