International Women’s Day (Festa della Donna)

by Anna Rowsell

In Italy on March 8th we celebrate la Festa della Donna by giving women a bunch of mimosa and for some, it also involves going out to clubs and watching men strip! Indeed, I love receiving my beautiful bright yellow flowers, but we mustn’t lose sight of the real purpose of this day. In Italy it has lost a lot of it’s political origins, however there are a lot of countries that choose to focus on the theme that the United Nations provides to celebrate each year, this year it is “equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all”, last year it was "Men and women united to end violence against women and children".

There is still a lot of work to be done to help women around the world from providing basic health care, to political emancipation, fair treatment at work etc. An article from Reuters shows that in areas of natural disaster or conflict zones, it tends to be the women and children who suffer more than men. Some of the aid agencies in Haiti are now focusing on providing food first to women as they are more likely to distribute it evenly. Because women traditionally are the carers, they are less mobile as they have children and elderly to take care of so cannot get away from danger areas quickly. In other countries, relief agencies are also focusing on women by giving them loans because they tend to be better at repaying the loans and again the money they make is used to support their families. At the moment the UN is calling for the rights of women to be part of any peace deal made between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Below are some interesting statistics I got from www.internationalwomensday.com to think about, some of it good news!

GENDER FACTS

Networking ...

• Women use 20,000 words a day while men only use 7,000

Global Issues ...

• Females in developing countries on average carry 20 litres of water per day over 6 km
• Globally women account for the majority of people aged over 60 and over 80
• Pregnant women in Africa are 180 times more likely to die than in Western Europe
• 530,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth each year
• World population hit 6,872,741,131 on 1 January 2009
• Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women
• 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are women
• Women own around only 1% of the world's land
• AIDS sees women's life expectancy of 43 in Uganda and Zambia
• 5 people are added to the world's population every 2 seconds
• Women are 2/3 of the 1 billion+ illiterate adults who have no access to basic education

Innovation ...

• Globally women comprise 42% internet users (Italy 37% ... US & Canada 51%)
• In OECD countries women comprise only 30 per cent of degrees in science and technology
• Women's representation in computer and information sciences workforce is around 30% globally
• Female inventors still only account for around 10% of the US inventor population

Business / Finance ...

• Women control $14 trillion in assets and this should grow to $22 trillion over next 10 years
• Women comprise 21 of the 37 million people living below the poverty line in the US
• Only in Japan and Peru are women more active in starting a business than men
• Women spend more time researching before they invest than men do

Media / Arts ...

• Only 21% of all news subjects (people interviewed or whom the news is about) are female
• Women are less than 1% department heads, editors, media owners but a third of working journalists
• 80% of UK purchasing decisions are made by women but 83% of ‘creatives’ are men

Work ...

• Women do two-thirds of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world’s income
• Women's education is the most powerful predictor of lower fertility rates
• One year out of college women earn 20% less than men and 10 years later 31% less
• Women on average are away from workforce for 14.7 years compared to 1.6 years for men
• The biggest EU gender pay gap is in Cyprus and Estonia at 25% then Slovakia at 24%

Government ...

• 56% of women who voted supported Obama compared to only 49% of men voted for Obama
• Until 20 years ago there had never been more than 5% women MPs globally
• Benazir Bhutto was the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country (assassinated 27/12/07)
• From the 27 EU member states, UK ranks 15 for women's representation in national Parliaments
• From 1945 to 1995 the percentage of women MPs worldwide increased four-fold

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