International Women's Day 2020 around the world

March 8, 2020 11:32 AM

In pictures. Live blog from The Guardian.

From the UN: International Women's Day 2020: We are #GenerationEquality

Protests and celebrations mark Women’s Day, despite threats (AP)

For Mexico, a day without women: Female workers plan national strike against rising gender violence (WaPo)

'This is our feminist spring': millions of Mexican women prepare to strike over femicides (Guardian)

Previously: what planet do you live on?

posted by katra (8 comments total)

This International Women’s Day, read 10 empowering stories from around the globe (The Lily / WaPo)

From a robot makers workshop for girls in Sydney, Australia, to a “peaceful and positive walk” in Mzuzu, Malawi, people around the world are celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8. Established by the United Nations in 1975, the day is meant to be a global celebration of the achievements of women. This year’s theme, #EachforEqual, spotlights how individual thoughts and actions can broaden perceptions and fight gender bias.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’ve rounded up 10 stories from the last year, from 10 different countries, that encapsulate that idea.

posted by katra at 12:05 PM on March 8, 2020

U.N. chief: Gender inequality biggest human rights challenge (Politico)

International Women’s Day is taking place a day before the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women holds a drastically scaled down one-day event so delegations in New York can adopt a draft political declaration commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1995 U.N. conference in Beijing that adopted the wide-ranging plan to achieve gender equality.

The commission had been expecting up to 12,000 people from its 193 member nations to be at its annual meeting. But it decided to postpone the major event until a later date because of the spread of the COVID-19 virus. [...] The draft declaration expected to be adopted Monday reaffirms the Beijing platform for action and expresses concern “that overall, progress has not been fast or deep enough.” It pledges to take “concrete action to ensure the full, effective and accelerated implementation” of the road map.

[...] Francoise Girard, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, said it was critical that governments recommit fully to the Beijing platform and called it heartening that they did so. She said governments also recommitted to achieving U.N. goals for 2030 that include sexual and reproductive rights for women, “so we feel that that is an extremely positive sign.”

What could really change the trajectory to achieve gender equality, Girard said, is ensuring that young girls can control their bodies, and there is still a long way to go. “Controlling your body — sexual and reproduction and free of violence — is critical to everything else,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s critical to education, to employment, to political participation, to sitting on boards of companies. All these things won’t happen unless you control your body.” On Friday, Guterres urged young women to keep up activism, and “please hold the world to account.”

posted by katra at 12:19 PM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Women and children part of thousands who took to streets around world as some protests turn violent (Guardian)

Female asylum seekers have staged a demonstration at the Turkish border demanding to be let in to the EU as part of protests around the world on International Women’s Day. All over the globe, thousands of women took to the streets, including South Americans campaigning for access to abortions and topless demonstrations in London and Paris.

Women and children carried placards with the words “Help us”, and “Don’t Kill Us — We Are Human” at the Pazarkule border crossing between Turkey and Greece on Sunday, where thousands of migrants have gathered since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to open the Turkish side of the border.

In Milan a small group of women — some wearing pink face masks — came out to show their support for the celebration, despite the region being under lockdown amid the rapid spread of coronavirus. [...] In France a clutch of virus deaths on Saturday took the death toll to 16, but Paris hosted several rallies — one of which was marred by violence that organisers blamed on police.

A demonstration in Kyrgyzstan also turned violent as police detained dozens of protesters — mainly women — after masked men attacked them and tore up their placards in the capital Bishkek. A police spokesman said they were detained for their own safety and because police had not been warned about the rally.

[...] In Paris, topless Femen activists wearing protective glasses and masks gathered at Place de la Concorde to denounce “the patriarchal pandemic”, despite the best efforts of police to control them. “Who’s doing the washing up?” they chanted. “We are making a revolution.”

posted by katra at 1:18 PM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Factbox: Where Latin America women are fighting the world's highest murder rates (Reuters, Mar. 6, 2020)

In Latin America and the Caribbean at least one out of every three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in her life, according to the United Nations. Femicide claims the lives of 12 women a day in Latin America which is home to 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide globally but 98% of these killings go unprosecuted.

Latin American women prepare for record feminist marches (Reuters, Mar. 7, 2020)

Millions of women are expected to hit the streets across Latin America on Sunday to mark International Women’s Day, against a backdrop of wider social unrest in the region. This year’s event coincides with attempts to pass laws to penalize femicide, legalize abortion, and give women an equal voice in drafting a new constitution. On Monday, women around the region are planning to stay home from work, school, and university to illustrate what public life would look like without them.

Latin American cities hold massive Women's Day marches (Mar. 8, 2020)

From Buenos Aires to Mexico City, women across Latin America’s biggest cities took to the streets for International Women’s Day on Sunday, spurred by a growing outcry over inequality, femicide and strict abortion controls.

[...] Thousands of protesters gathered in Chile’s capital city, Santiago, and elsewhere in the country as the marches kicked off. Police said 1,700 officers were on hand for crowd control nationwide. Many carried signs calling for access to abortion and an end to violence against women.

“I’m so happy about what’s happening today,” said one protester, who asked to be identified as Patricia V. “Chile needs women to increase their power in public life, for the good of all women and men. We need more equality not only socially, but economically and politically.”

posted by katra at 2:42 PM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

katra: "Thousands of protesters gathered in Chile’s capital city, Santiago"

It was probably closer to 1 million. Here's some good pics.
posted by signal at 4:27 PM on March 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

From resisting colonizers to leading uprisings, from racial equality to an end to gender violence, women are at the forefront of struggles for a better future.
For #InternationalWomensDay, some powerful photos of women protesting globally. #IWD2020 #DiaInternacionalDeLaMujer
posted by adamvasco at 5:42 PM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

For pictures and videos galore from Pakistan, check out #AuratMarch2020 on Twitter. Also, this glorious anthem from the Women's Democratic Front in Pakistan.
posted by bardophile at 11:53 PM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

'If you don't want us, we'll disappear': thousands of Mexican women protest violence (Guardian)

Countless thousands of women and girls across Mexico have joined a historic strike to protest against the country’s startling rates of gender-based violence – and the government’s failure to respond to the crisis in which more than ten women are murdered every day.

From factories along the Río Grande to businesses in the capital and offices in cities near the Guatemalan border, women and girls joined the unprecedented protest, billed as a Day Without Women.

[...] Women’s strikes have been held previously in Argentina and Chile, as well as Poland and Spain. But Amneris Chaparro, a researcher at the gender studies center at the National Autonomous University, said Mexico had never before had a major women’s strike – despite its long tradition of labor and student activism.

But the spiraling death toll of women and girls targeted for their gender – and a horrific recent string of high-profile crimes – has inspired new passion in the country’s women’s movement.

“Every day we have more evidence that they are killing us specifically for being women,” said Maria de la Luz Estrada, the executive coordinator of the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide.

“If this government wants a transformation of this county, they have to face the problem.”

posted by katra at 3:17 PM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]