International Women's Day this year has as its theme the celebration of leadership by women throughout the world. There have been notable examples of it over the last year, in politics and other spheres. Given the narrowing of political choice in many developed states, this is an important source of political innovation for men and women alike. Global inequalities and imbalances of power between the two sexes, which remain gross in many areas, are both unjust and a foolish waste of human talent and civility.
Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor in Germany, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia the first woman president in Africa and in Chile Michelle Bachelet the first in Latin America. The gender gap alone does not explain the world's injustices and inequalities. But it makes a real difference when such leaders bring alternative values and priorities to public life and office - whether they have to do with ensuring all have equal chances to live rewarding lives or changing the balance between domestic and working life by sharing caring tasks more equally.
The struggle to achieve these goals has inspired successive generations of women since International Women's Day was, in effect, inaugurated in Copenhagen in 1910. It has always had a wide appeal and now has a global one, though the precise message varies hugely over time and region and depends so much on personality and policy.
The world needs a political agenda to secure justice and equality between men and women - and progress towards achieving it has been painfully slow since the United Nations conference on the subject in Beijing in 1995 framed it. Figures for rape, trafficking and domestic violence against women in many states bear this out. But the public and voluntary organisations fighting against them are empowered by such a framework to sustain their work.
Ireland has made many strides towards greater equality and women's participation in recent years, as may be seen from the figures published this week in Brussels by Eurostat. Compared to women in other EU member states they are more likely to finish their education and less likely to be unemployed than Irish men; but they earn less than them, and are much less well represented in senior management and politics. Ireland and France have some of the lowest numbers of women in national parliament, for example - a mere 13 per cent. The Oireachtas is not a friendly institution for anybody combining work with domestic responsibilities - a fact that bears more heavily on women.
Other EU states have made much more progress towards equalising gender participation in public life, much of it by determined action at party level. In Spain, for example, 36 per cent of parliamentarians are women and legislation has just been passed requiring companies to reach agreements on gender equalisation. Deliberate policies can work to establish new equalities.