International Women’s Day 2024: Date, Theme, History And Significance

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is 'Invest in women: Accelerate Progress'.

Women’s well-being and achieving gender equality in different life aspects is crucial to creating successful economies and a healthy planet.

However, the UN has underlined a key challenge: The alarming $360 billion annual deficit in gender-equality measures by 2030.

The organisation further highlighted five key areas that need joint action:

• Investing in women, a human rights issue: Gender equality is the greatest human rights challenge that needs to be addressed to benefit everyone.

• Ending poverty: According to the UN, 75 million people have fallen into poverty due to the pandemic and immediate action is necessary to save 342 million women and girls from poverty by 2030.  

• Implementing gender-responsive financing: The increasing prices and conflicts worldwide may result in 75% countries restricting public spending by 2025, which may adversely impact women being able to access essentials.

• Shifting to a green economy and care society: The current economic system is imbalanced which affects women and, hence, there is a need to adopt a green economy and care society to amplify women’s voices.

• Supporting feminist change-makers: Feminist clubs and organisations record only 0.13% of official development assistance.