Tomorrow Is International Women’s Day

On March 8, women and men around the globe will mark International Women’s Day with events, discussions, and ceremonies. It is a day for honoring, a day for celebration, and a day of sober recognition of the work ahead.

The United Nations’ theme for IWD 2007 is “Take action to end impunity for violence against women and girls.” Last year, the Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women concluded the following:

Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.

It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically “missing.” They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.

The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.

Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.

At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.

It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.

Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world’s conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.

Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

What will you do to make your own voice heard on March 8 and every other day? We tend to think of peacemaking on a global scale, but it’s one voice at a time in our own homes, our own families, our own workplaces and neighborhoods. It’s your voice getting heard, your voice making a difference in your own life, so that it may echo in the lives of others.

Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.