International Women’s Day (IWD) was born out of a protest by 15,000 garment workers in New York in 1908, who took to the streets to demand shorter hours, better pay, an end to child labour and voting rights. One hundred and fifteen years later, two of those aims are still a work in progress. Women in the EU earned on average 13 per cent less than men in 2020. Here, 87 per cent of large companies have a gender pay gap. As for the demand for shorter hours, women’s share of the unpaid domestic load is at least two and a half times that of men, according to the United Nations (UN).
Inequality persists in other ways. One in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence, mostly by an intimate partner, the UN reports. In Ireland, gardaí get a call about domestic abuse every 10 minutes. There are still too few refuge beds, and not enough access to abortion care. In 2021, 10 women travelled to the UK from Ireland for abortion services every week.
Online spaces are a new frontier in the battle for gender equality, as women are disproportionately targeted for abuse and harassment. The resignations of Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon prompted a global conversation about how politics has become an increasingly inhospitable place for women. In Ireland, where women’s representation in politics is lower than in China or Iraq, female politicians are forced to reckon with vile harassment, threats and dehumanisation.
We need to keep talking about these inequalities, and not just on March 8th. Some of the events to mark IWD have real impact, such as the It Stops Now campaign on sexual violence by the National Women’s Council and the Union of Students in Ireland. But for too many organisations, it is little more than an annual box-ticking exercise, a festival of copy-and-paste platitudes and commercial exploitation. Throughout the day, inspiring, strong and courageous women will be celebrated at brunches and panels.
‘It’s about women North and South learning about each other, learning about the grassroots issues in their communities’
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘There is a longing for outrage and ugliness, an excitement about the idea of somebody being publicly pilloried’
The women I am celebrating on this International Women’s Day are those in a rage
Shaping the Century: 25 brilliant Irish women in 2025
But it is what happens on the other 364 days that really matters. What women want this IWD is less tokenism and much more progress.
