international women's day

International Women's Day is marked around the world on 8 March as an occasion for the celebration of the political, social and economic empowerment of women, and for the reassertion of women's rights worldwide.

Wednesday 9th March

"The rising of the women means the rising of us all"

Rebecca Johnson, 9 March 2011

In the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement had a badge that proclaimed: women who seek equality with men lack ambition. We don’t want to participate as equals in the violence, oppression and greed of patriarchal power, says Rebecca Johnson.

Tuesday 8th March

Promise and peril: women and the ‘Arab spring’

Deniz Kandiyoti, 8 March 2011

Women were visible and effective in the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Will this moment of opening yield empowering outcomes? Deniz Kandiyoti argues that the greatest peril lies in truncated or aborted transitions where women’s rights are offered up as an item of populist compromise

Feminism and the soul of secularism

Rahila Gupta, 8 March 2011

Secularism, as a concept, appears to be in danger from both the left and the right. Among feminists, it tends to be only some minority women scrambling for the soul of secularism. It is time for all feminists to muck in, says Rahila Gupta

Egypt: the two faces of liberation

Zainab Magdy, 8 March 2011

"The goddess Sekhmet has risen once and will rise again so Hathour can flourish in peace and justice" - Zainab Magdy reports from Cairo as women gather for the Million Women March in Tahrir Square today

Guns, war and the domestic battlefield

Cynthia Cockburn, 8 March 2011

As guns proliferate in a worldwide market with few controls, many get diverted from state and rebel armies to petty criminals and 'the man in the street'. Sexual and domestic violence is becoming more deadly, reports Cynthia Cockburn

Monday 7th March

Rocking the cradle - and the boat

Alice Welbourn, 7 March 2011

Global funding for HIV/Aids now goes to large international organisations. They need the grassroots organisations to tick their boxes of “community involvement”, but they are corporate entities, and the money for the daily advocacy work of positive women has all but dried up, says Alice Welbourn

Sri Lanka: where are the women in local government?

Chulani Kodikara, 7 March 2011

The women party activists who applied for nominations to stand in next week's local elections in Sri Lanka found themselves blocked by a system of entrenched patron-client relationships. As one of them said, " for how long will the men decide where the wells should be, even though it is the women who fetch the water?".

Monday 8th March