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EUROPEAN WOMEN'S LOBBY - EWL
 
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8 March International Women's Day

Shouldn’t every day be International Women’s Day?

 International Women’s Day, celebrated the world over, provides a moment in the year to evaluate progress towards achieving the empowerment of women and girls and at the same time to measure the extent to which equality between women and men has advanced.

This year is particularly busy around International Women’s Day with a number of different events at all levels related to women’s rights. At the level of the United Nations, the 51st session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW, 26 February – 9 March) focuses on the girl child. The focus of the meeting will be on the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child. Because girls and women are part of the same continuum, failure to address inequalities in childhood leads to exacerbated gender inequalities in the later stages of the life cycle of women. EWL and women’s NGOs are mobilising around this theme to make sure that the international community makes progress in addressing gender equality in relation to girls and boys in order to break the spiral of continuous inequality of women throughout their life cycle. A proactive and systematic approach to gender equality in early childhood requires a number of strategies, one of which requires that the girl child is visible in all policies, strategies, actions and programmes relating to children.

At European level, different events will take place within European institutions around March 8th, some specifically around women’s rights and others that are not, but which are nonetheless crucial for the advancement of equality between women and men such as the Spring Summit 2007. Those events will be an opportunity for EWL and women’s organisations to remind decision-makers of their commitments such as the European Pact for Gender Equality adopted at the Spring Summit 2006. Every day should be a day when equality between women and men and women’s right are on the agenda of decision-makers at the highest level and March 8th is an opportunity to stress it once again!





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