Dear JOhn,

I walked past a bakery the other day, selling special International Women’s Day donuts. I hesitated (for many reasons) trying to make the connection between women’s rights and donuts. 

Seconds later, I thought, who cares about the connection. That bakery is adding its sugary, delightful voice to our movement, in recognition that we still live in a world where women are not treated as equals. 

International Women’s Day has existed for over a century, bringing together people and organizations around the world to celebrate the success of women while asking what more can be done to achieve enduring equality.

The First International Women’s Day

Over 100 years ago, in 1911, International Women’s Day was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, demanding the right to vote, to hold public office and against employment discrimination. 

100 years later...

Despite a century of progress, there are hundreds, if not thousands of sex discriminatory laws still in place affecting the lives of women and girls and their families every day, as we highlight in our new Words & Deeds report.

For example, Article 123 of Lebanon’s Personal Status Law of the Catholic Sects has strict definitions of roles within the family:

Breastfeeding concerns the mother. The other rights and duties of the parental authority are, in principle, confined to the father.

Article 125 further provides that a mother loses custody of her child for reasons such as divorce or remarriage that do not also apply to the father. Laws that give preferential right of custody or guardianship over children to the father over the mother discriminate against women and are based on a sex stereotype that views men as superior to women. These laws also limit a mother’s ability to make decisions about the upbringing of her own child.

Baffling, but straightforward to fix

Equality Now will campaign, campaign and campaign until all sex discriminatory laws are repealed or amended (50 have already been repealed since our first Words & Deeds report). 

Here are three ways you can help us make equality reality this International Women’s Day:

Let’s #MakeEqualityReality, together!

In solidarity,

Emma Thompson
Director of Communications  

P.S. You may have heard that on March 2nd, United Nations Member States agreed, due to concerns related to the COVID-19 virus, to cancel all sessions, side events and parallel events for the 64th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), except for a session for States to adopt the Political Declaration. We understand that global health concerns must take priority, but we also know that women’s and girls’ rights still need promoting and protecting, with or without CSW. That’s why Equality Now will continue no matter what, to push governments to turn words into deeds.