Activists plan to #PressforProgress
Organizers will use International Women’s Day 2018 to step up their push for gender parity worldwide.
They are women, hear them roar. And for the past 14 months — through two Januaries of vigorous rallies and months of surging Me Too and Times Up movements — that roar has turned into a global outcry.
Thursday, organizers of International Women’s Day 2018 hope to capitalize on that momentum and crank up the equality meter even more with #PressforProgress — a push for gender parity worldwide.
Women’s voices rang out at marches on President Trump’s first full day in office in 2017 and again a year later. They’ve taken on added potency as public revelations about sexual harassment and assault galvanized countries last fall. A World Economic Forum Gender Gap report that showed parity more than 200 years away further fueled the fire.
Women’s Day organizers see the wave of activism as a critical moment.
Gender parity is under an intense spotlight, Glenda Stone, partnerships director for International Women’s Day, told USA TODAY. There are a “lot more awareness-raising campaigns and an overall expectation by young populations that society will be more equal,” Stone said.
A new poll of 27 countries underlined the challenges ahead. Though sexual harassment is seen as the biggest equality issue facing women, many — 50% — say they believe women who come forward aren’t taken seriously and reports are ignored, according to the poll by Ipsos in collaboration with International Women’s Day. Misperceptions prevail.
For example, 60% of women in the USA say they have experienced sexual harassment — but the average guess by survey participants was 57%. And there was a gender divide: women guessing 64% and men 49%. In Britain, 68% of women say they have been harassed; poll respondents put it closer to 55%.
International Women’s Day marches, rallies and seminars help by providing “powerful catalysts for awareness raising,” Stone said.