“Time to Make the Promise of Equality a Reality”

UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 

100 years on

Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

The strength, industry and wisdom of women remain humanity’s greatest untapped resource. We simply cannot afford to wait another 100 years to unlock this potential.

Women, but not only women, pay the price for discrimination against women. All of us suffer for failing to make the most of half the world’s talent and potential.

We undermine the quality of our democracy
We undermine the strength of our economies
We undermine the health of our societies
We undermine the sustainability of peace

One hundred years ago, only two countries allowed women to vote. Today women’s right to vote is virtually universal and women have won elections to lead Governments on every continent. Where once banned, women today hold leading positions in professions.

Still, more recently than a hundred years, police, courts and neighbors see violence in the home as a purely private matter. Two-thirds of countries have specific laws that penalize domestic violence. The United Nations Security Council now recognizes sexual violence as a deliberate tactic of war.

A hundred years ago today, women across the world took an historic step on the long road to equality. 

The first ever International Women’s Day drew attention to the unacceptable and often dangerous working conditions that so many women faced worldwide. This year’s focus of International Women’s Day on women’s equal access to education, training, science and technology underscores the need to tap this potential— the strength, industry and wisdom of women, which remains humanity’s greatest untapped resource.

Source and notes

Message from UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2011, International Women’s Day 2011: “Time to Make the Promise of Equality a Reality,” posted on March 7 2011 | Executive Director | Statements

UN Women

The agenda to secure gender equality and women’s rights is a global agenda, a challenge for every country, rich and poor, north and south. In recognition of both its universality and the rewards inherent in this agenda toward securing this right, the United Nations brought together four existing organizations to form UN Women. The goal of UN Women is to galvanize the entire UN system to deliver on the promise of the UN Charter of equal rights of men and women. It is something I have fought for my whole life.

http://www.unwomen.org/2011/03/international-womens-day-2011-time-to-make-the-promise-of-equality-a-reality/

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