Celebrate Every Woman - International Women's Day

There are more than 250 million women alive today who were married before their 15th birthday, many against their will. This is a worldwide problem driven by deep-rooted patriarchal beliefs that girls only have value in roles as traditional housewives and homemakers, therefore it is not worth investing time and money into education or a life beyond marriage. The pandemic has exacerbated the issue: according to UN Women, 10 million more girls are at risk of becoming child brides by 2030 as a direct result of COVID-19.

According to the World Health Organisation, it is estimated that one in three women will experience some kind of physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime. As a result of national lockdowns, cases of domestic abuse skyrocketed in what the UN called the ‘shadow pandemic’. Calls to domestic violence helplines increased during the pandemic by 40% in Malaysia, 50% in China and Somalia and a huge 79% in Colombia.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2021 found that at our current rate, it will take another 135.6 years to achieve equality between men and women globally. Like many points on this list, the gender gap has only been worsened by the pandemic, with women facing higher redundancy rates and greater job instability as a result of economic shock - reports suggest that 5% of all employed women lost their jobs, compared with 3.9% of employed men. Data from LinkedIn also showed a decline of women’s hiring into leadership roles, creating a reversal of 1 to 2 years of progress across multiple industries. 

Yes, you read that correctly: more men called John than women holding leadership roles. According to the 2018 Women in the Workplace report, only 38% of management positions are held by women. And for those that do break the glass ceiling, they are twice as likely as men to be mistaken for junior employees. Despite everything going on in 2020, some good news was that about 8% of Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs - an all time high, but still far from the 50% we want to see.

In the 93 year history of the Academy Awards, just eight women have been nominated in the Best Director category. Ever. Until Chloé Zhao's win in 2021 for Nomadland, the only winner was Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for the film The Hurt Locker. The character of The Joker, on the other hand, has earned an Oscar for both Heath Ledger (Best Supporting Actor, 2009) and Joaquin Phoenix (Best Actor, 2020).

We all know that when we educate girls we enrich both individuals and communities - in every sense of the word too, from better employment prospects to better healthcare, educating young girls is essential. When girls miss out on education this increases the risk of forced marriage, trafficking and poverty. According to UN Women, half of all refugee girls enrolled in secondary school before the pandemic will not return to school, and in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 1 million girls may drop out of school due to pregnancy during the COVID-19 crisis. There’s still a long way to go, but we can celebrate that two thirds of developing countries have now achieved gender equality in primary education. 

Saudi Arabia is among the countries that bar women from opening a bank account or obtaining credit without permission from a guardian, while others require a woman to be married before she can access financial services. More research from The World Bank shows that even in areas where women don’t have these restrictions, only 65% of women have bank accounts in comparison to 72% of men. Some countries are putting in serious work to try and close this gender gap, such as India, where current statistics show 83% of men have a bank account compared to 77% of women - a gap that has narrowed to 6% from 20% in 2014.

According to a 2019 study by the Mental Health Foundation, 10% of women have felt so bad about their appearance that they have self-harmed. In a similar survey, King’s University found that 87% of women compare their body to images they consume on social and traditional media, and 50% of those compare them unfavourably. Campaigns such as ‘Be Real’ are working to combat body image issues by encouraging people to take a pledge to champion body positivity.

The coronavirus pandemic has truly shown us all how much we rely on the essential workers who run our health services. Globally women make up the majority of the workforce in this sector, but are underrepresented in leadership and also paid less than their male counterparts. What’s worse is that much of the early PPE was sized to fit men, leaving women on the frontline unnecessarily exposed to the virus.

With the rise in homeschooling as a result of lockdowns, women have ended up bearing the brunt of the increased domestic workload. Whether that means teaching children, managing the household, cooking or cleaning, women took on three times more work around the house and unpaid care compared to men even before the pandemic. Since then, data from 16

countries has shown that women with children at home spent 31 hours per week on childcare during COVID-19 – up from 26 hours previously.

Because of so many factors already on this list, it isn’t a surprise that women face higher poverty rates than men - wage inequality, unpaid labour, unemployment, the gender education gap. According to an American Progress report, 12.9% of women in the US were living in poverty in 2018, with the highest rates found amongst Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Black women and those from a Hispanic background.