International Women’s Day is celebrated globally every year on 8th March.
This day was originally established to honour the movement for women’s civil and social rights. Voting Rights Claims, the right to exercise a public function, the rights to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job are the basic elements of the first women’s movements of the twentieth century.
Today, these issues are proposed to give a greater impetus to the debate on gender equality, protection of rights against all forms of discrimination and violence, the role of women in society, in the family and at work.
Many barriers to women’s emancipation have been broken down but there is still a long way to go.
According to the most recent United Nations estimates, at the political level, women are still underrepresented in national parliaments and even within the ministerial team of national governments, mainly covering positions in the social sector (education and health).
Even in the economic and social fields, there is still a problem concerning the low levels of female labour force participation, gender discrimination in the workplace, vulnerable works and violence against women.
Finally, the figures on violence against women are still worrying, as stated in the report recently published by the European Agency for fundamental rights “Violence against women: an EU-wide survey”. The report describes the main results issued from a survey based on a sample of 42.000 women from the 28 EU Member States.
How does CESIE contribute?
Our current projects targeting women:
- IN2SAI – Increasing young women participating in Science Studies and in the Aeronautic Industry
- SUNIA GEEL 2 – Take care of yourself 2
- REPLACE 2 – Researching Female Genital Mutilation Intervention Programmes Linked to African Communities in the EU
- ROOT – The involvement of Organized Criminal Groups in the Trafficking of Women for Sexual Exploitation: the case study of Palermo
- MER – Mediterranean for gender Equality and Rights
Moreover, for more information about facts and figures concerning the situation of women today, we suggest the website of the United Nations “UN WOMEN”
