Namrata Sharma

On March 8 this year, I was pleasantly surprised by my next door 6-year old neighbour who visited me with her father with a card she had made for me. On it, she wrote “happy women’s day aunty - women are strong”. Her father also brought a gift for me – a bag with words printed “proud to be a woman”. Although they may not have noticed, I felt really overwhelmed with the feeling that a father and daughter were addressing International Women’s Day (IWD) by greeting their neighbour who has been in this campaign for decades. This is the kind of positive change that the movement has brought in Nepal. This gives me positivity and hope that Nepal is in safe hands. However, the question here is who will ensure that this 6-year old and all the other girls in Nepal will get to live in a free, safe and secure environment without facing any gender-based violence?
The International Women’s Day 2021 was very significant because it was a day when women all over the world reflected on how the coronavirus pandemic ruined the decades of work on establishing equality and rights for women. Recent data from the UN Women reveals that the pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality. Women are now again doing significantly more domestic chores and family care because of the pandemic, which in turn can impact job and education opportunities. This year’s UN theme for 2021 is "Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world".

Action for equality
Deliberations all over the world on March 8 this year made us realise that as we endure the pandemic and the instability, the economic crisis, the racial and gender injustice that has been seen all over the world, the biggest challenge now is how to once more ensure that we build a world that works for women. Therefore, during this year’s IWD #Choosetochallenge has become a very strong campaign in the social media. A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. So it is now important for men, women and transgender all over the world, to face up to the challenges and make sure that the pandemic doesn’t push back the women’s movements by decades. We now have to question ourselves and others how we can help to forge a gender equal world? During these difficult times and IWD celebration week - not just the day - we need to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness against bias and take action for equality.
The IWD is an outcome of the labour movement that has now become a recognised annual event by the United Nations (UN). In 1908, fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter working hours, better pay and the right to vote. A year later, the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Women’s Day. In 1910 Clara Zetkin suggested during an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen to mark this day as the International Women’s Day. There were 100 women there, from 17 countries, and they unanimously agreed on her suggestion. The first International Women's Day was celebrated in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. The centenary was celebrated in 2011. In 1975 the United Nations started celebrating this day. Since then the IWD has become a date to celebrate how far women have come in the society, in politics and in economics. The day has strikes and protests organised all over the world to raise awareness of continued inequality.
During the war time strike in 1917, the Russian women demanded “bred and peace.” After 4 days of strikes by the Russian women, the Tsar was forced to abdicate and the provisional government granted women the right to vote. The date when the women's strike commenced on the Julian calendar, which was then in use in Russia, was Sunday 23 February. This day in the Gregorian calendar was 8 March - and that's when March 8 was started to be celebrated as IWD.
Nepal too celebrates March 8 as IWD and it is a public holiday for women in Nepal. Why is it important to celebrate this day during the pandemic as there were numerous rallies that were already organised all over the world to mark this day? According to the IWD campaign and the World Economic Forum, “gender parity will not be attained for almost a century, none of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children".

Strategy
Therefore, in a country like Nepal, in order to ensure that children like my next door 6-year old girl and fathers like hers will be confident to take to the streets without fear. We now need to start looking at strategies on mitigating the set-backs created by the Pandemic. Children, mainly girls and those, who belong to the other category defined by Nepal government, need to be ensured that they are educated and are able to take important decisions in their lives. When we are still in the 8th March week and throughout this year 2021, we need to start making strategies to undo the inequality brought about by the pandemic.

(Namrata Sharma is a senior journalist and women rights advocate. namrata1964@yahoo.com Twitter handle: NamrataSharmaP)