International Women's Day 2009
06 March 2009
Falling on 8 March every year, International Women's Day has been celebrated for almost 100 years. Hundreds of events take place around the world, connecting women and marking achievements.
While great gains have been made, with women reaching into all spheres of influence, unfortunately it is still a fact that gender inequality still exists. Globally women’s health and education are worse than that of men. The current global economic turmoil threatens to further increase vulnerability of women and girls.
The global theme for International Women’s Day 2009 is women and men united to end violence against women and girls.
Poverty and inequality linked
More than one billion people live in poverty around the world: the majority of them are women. Women are often denied access to education, food, medical care, land and more. We believe that poverty and inequality are so closely linked that one cannot be tackled without addressing the other. Read Concern's equality policy.
As a result of this, gender equality underpins Concern’s policies and practices, and is at the heart of its work. This includes Concern’s main programmes, including health, HIV and AIDS, education, livelihoods and emergency responses.
White ribbon campaign
As part of the global white ribbon campaign of men working to end men’s violence against women, the male staff in Concern Ethiopia have recently pledged their support to the cause.
The translation of their pledge from Amharic reads:
“When violence happened against women, I remember
My mother, my wife, my sister and my daughter.
I won’t commit violence against women
and I don’t keep silent if I see it happen”.
Concern, with the support of the public and governments, will continue tackling issues of violence against women and girls in the 30 countries we operate. Whether it’s domestic violence, or violence elsewhere, we will continue to work with women and men, girls and boys, to end this horrific reality.
