International Women’s Day:
The Union Minister of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways has flagged off an all-women crew onboard Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) vessel MT Swarna Krishna.
- The initiative is a part of SCI’s ongoing Diamond Jubilee celebrations and also to commemorate International Women’s Day (8th March).
- This is the first time in the world maritime history that a cargo ship is being sailed by all women officers.
International Women’s Day:
It is celebrated annually on 8th March. It includes:
- Celebration of women’s achievements,
- raising awareness about women’s equality,
- lobbying for accelerated gender parity,
- fundraising for female-focused charities, etc.
- Women’s Day was first celebrated back in 1911 by Clara Zetkin, who was a German. The roots of the celebration had been in the labor movement.
- It was only in 1913, however, that the celebrations were shifted to 8th March, and it has remained that way ever since.
- International Women’s Day was celebrated for the first time by the United Nations in 1975.
- In December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.
2021 Theme:
- The UN has decided to keep the theme as “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world”.
- Meanwhile, some groups of women have called for the theme to be “Choose to challenge”, claiming that the world only became alert about such issues if it was challenged.
Related Data:
- According to the UN, legal restrictions have kept 2.7 billion women from accessing the same choice of jobs as men.
- As of 2019, less than 25% of parliamentarians were women.
- One in three women experiences gender-based violence.
- In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, female labor force participation in India was 20.5%, according to ILO estimates. Comparable estimates for males were 76%.
- In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (which measures progress towards gender parity),
- India slipped to 112th place in 2019-20, simply because over 70 lakh Indian women have dropped out of work.
