International Women's Day 2024
International Women's Day is celebrated every year on March 8, recognizing and amplifying women around the world. Women are frequently under-represented in important global discussions, such as peace and climate action, and all too routinely unacknowledged for their substantial contributions, such as in care work and education. This year, the United Nations official theme for International Women's Day is Invest in women: Accelerate progress, highlighting the necessity of taking women into consideration when financial decisions are made regarding human rights, just transition, government policies, and the green economy.
For the first time this year, UNFCCC COP28 featured a Gender Day, a day completely devoted to the unique challenges women face with respect to climate change, with a particular focus on gender-responsive financing. A workshop for Gender Responsive Just Transition was presented by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UNFCCC to discuss the gap that continues to exist among genders with respect to employment, social protection, pay, working conditions, and decision-making spaces. UN Women also introduced their report on feminist climate justice, which speaks to the importance of representation and reparation, ensuring that women's voices are heard and that the Global North bears a larger share of the responsibility for historical emissions. Parties also met to discuss the timeline on the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG) and its Gender Action Plan (GAP).
The UN theme this year is a call to action based on five areas:
Investing in women is a human rights issue.
Immediate action is required to prevent over 342 million women and girls from living in poverty by 2030.
Gender-responsive financing needs to be implemented to prevent 75% of countries from cutting public spending that impact women by 2025.
Shift to a green economy and care society to amplify women's voices.
Support feminist change-makers and feminist organizations, which receive only 0.13% of official development assistance.
Gender-responsive financing monitors the gender gap and uses the analysis to determine future budgets. It creates financial plans that are aware that women and marginalized genders are disproportionately impacted by such factors as the economic system, government policies, the lack of social programs. For example, unpaid care and domestic work performed by women around the world can be three times more valuable than the global tech industry. Engagement is required from the government, the private sector, and civil society in order to create laws, policies, and economic frameworks to address the under-investment on women and girls. The diverse needs of women must be recognized to continue to decrease the gender gap, reach gender equity and ensure a just transition for all.
