100th anniversary of International Women's Day

(March 08, 2011) The head of the new United Nations women's agency said on Tuesday there has been “remarkable progress” since International Women's Day was first celebrated a century ago but gender equality remains a distant goal because women still suffer widespread discrimination and lack political and economic clout. In a statement marking the 100th International Women's Day on March 8^th, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the first executive director of UN Women since January, said that progress in women’s rights and status is a mixture of pride and disappointment. What is called International Women's Day began as International Working Women's Day on March 19, 1911. During the International Women's Year In 1975, the United Nations began celebrating March 8 as International Women's Day. Two years later the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a day for women's rights and international peace. Bachelet noted that despite an unprecedented expansion of women's rights and entitlements in the last century, the hopes of equality expressed on that first International Women's Day are a long way from being realized. Girls are still less likely to be in school than boys, almost two-thirds of illiterate adults are women, and every 90 seconds a woman dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications despite the knowledge and resources to make births safe, she said, and women continue to earn less than men for the same work and have unequal inheritance rights and access to land.