Tuesday 8 March 2011

Happy International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day - sadly hardly even noticed in the UK. It has been celebrated around the world since 1910. In Russia and Italy, the mimosa or Silver Wattle flower is associated with International Women's Day.

The Bluestocking would like to wish all our readers a happy International Women's Day - and believes that we should continue to celebrate International Women's Day until gender equality is achieved.

Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench have teamed up for a two-minute film highlighting the need for gender equality:
Dench rattles through a grim list of statistics detailing continuing inequality of the sexes worldwide. "Every year 70 million girls are deprived of even a basic education and a staggering 60 million are sexually assaulted on the way to school."

The film concludes: "So are we equals? Until the answer is yes we must never stop asking."

There is also an International Men's Day on 19 November, just in case the chaps were feeling left out.