African Woman and Child Feature Service

Today marks 100 years since the world conceived the idea to be celebrating the International Women’s Day. It also marks 15 years since the world came together in a clarion call that women’s issues are global and universal. The call was punctuated by the Platform for Action, a powerful agenda which had carefully developed strategies for the empowerment of women.

Today, however, goes down the annals of the United Nations history as the day when Ms Esther Murugi Mathenge, Minister for Gender and head of the Kenyan delegations to the Beijing +15 review conference in New York called for a change to the dates when the Commission on the Status of Women meeting is held, to allow member states mark the day in their home countries.

“We wish to propose that the CSW dates be changed so that future sessions are held after the International Women’s Day,” said Murugi.

The minister argued this will allow delegates to celebrate the day in their respective countries and give it the significance and visibility that it deserves.

For majority of women, this day is a reminder of how far they have come in the struggle for gender equality. It has been a long journey marked with struggles. Even though there has been progress on women and decision-making, the gains realised are currently being eroded by financial, energy, climate change and food crises.

The International Women’s Day, being marked this year under theme Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity: Progress for All is taking place when the women’s movement is at a crossroads. However, the women attending the review conference are in agreement on one thing: “Women have been missing at the decision-making table for too long, while they could have had a chance to turn the tide and make a difference to the majority of women.

“You cannot miss at the table and yet you are part of the menu, the women are saying enough is enough,” said a delegate from Zambia.

Even though previous celebrations of the IWD have always been marked with pomp, this year’s event seems to have been marked with some soul searching among gender advocates.

“We realise that it is not business as usual, we need to start leveraging women’s issues into the wider world perspective,” said Deborah Okumu, Executive Director Women’s Leadership Caucus, who was also in New York.

According to Okumu, whatever happens in any part of the world affects women globally and they need to come up with strategies of re-influencing the Beijing Platform for Action. They should position it to make sense in the new world order debate.

“Equal opportunities have remained elusive for women for all these years especially in countries which have experienced conflicts,” reiterated Okumu. She added; “Time has come for women to harness the gains we have realised and re-position women’s issues at the table of decision-making.”

Also in New York was Commissioner Jane Kiano, who was a member of the Kenyan delegation. She regretted that in all these years, equality between men and women has been elusive especially after the first women’s decade which started in Mexico in 1975.

“I hope that the women of the world can support each in the struggle to achieve gender equality,” she said.

But as the Beijing +15 Conference enters its second week on this auspicious day, the women are not celebrating yet. Their feelings can be summed up in the words of Lena Lewis, US socialist who declared in 1910 that “it was not a time for celebrating anything, but rather a day for anticipating all the struggles to come when we may eventually and forever stamp out the last vestige of male egotism and his desire to dominate over women”.

For women in Africa, the struggle for women’s emancipation has been jeopardised by many challenges facing the region which include feminisation of poverty, conflict and wars, HIV/AIDS, violence against women and maternal mortality among others.

According Micheline Ravololonarisoa, Chief of UNIFEM's Africa Section, these issues are of concern to majority of women and especially at a time when the UN is restructuring and with the proposed new UN agency for women also underway.

“There is need for women’s voices to be heard loud and clear on the establishment of the new agency since time has come for governments to start investing on gender equality,” Ravololonarisoa said.

The Head of Chinese Delegation Meng Xiaosi said the women’s revolution might be the longest revolution ever known to mankind.

Xiaosi regretted that gender equality is not a reality in many countries and yet studies have shown that countries which are not allowing women to be at the same level as men are poor while those that have mainstreamed gender equality are rich.

“Unless the world starts equating economic growth of countries with gender equality, we will continue witnessing many crises in years to come,” Xiaosi said.

Reiterating that women and men are never born enemies but equal partners, Xiaosi said women’s advancement not only brings integrity and happiness but also better life and joy to all.

“International Women's Day not only belongs to women but also to all people of the world,” she said.