International Women\u2019s Day on Tuesday celebrated women and their accomplishments, but it also offered a stark reminder of the gender divides in rights, representation and pay.<\/p>\n
The day carried the theme \u201cPledge for Parity\u201d \u2014 a phrase and hashtag born out of the World Economic Forum\u2019s recent projection that the progress on achieving global gender parity is slowing.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s home page on Tuesday featured a video of women and girls dreaming and doing big things. Twitter and Facebook feeds filled with quotes from inspirational women and calls to action.<\/p>\n
But the U.N. cultural agency also offered sobering statistics: More than 63 million girls are excluded from school in more than 200 countries across the world. Almost 16 million girls between the ages of 6 and 11 \u2014 compared with about 8 million boys \u2014 will never get the chance to learn to read or write in primary school \u201cif current trends continue,\u201d according to a report from UNESCO\u2019s Institute for Statistics.<\/p>\n
Women also account for 70 percent of the world\u2019s hungry, the U.N. reported, in part because longstanding discrimination has limited their access to food.<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama, a father of two daughters, said in a statement that allowing women and girls around the world to rise and achieve their full potential will mean \u201ca brighter, more peaceful and more prosperous future for us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillary Clinton, vying to become the country\u2019s first woman president, tweeted Tuesday that advancing the status of women and girls will make economies grow and nations more secure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the right \u2014 and smart \u2014 thing to do,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed empowering women as he spoke of preventable deaths during child birth and those who are subjected to \u201cgenital mutilation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actress Emma Watson, kicking off a weeklong U.N. arts event aimed at initiating a dialogue about gender, said it\u2019s not enough for people to rationally understand the necessity of gender equality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also about making them feel it in their bones,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Some countries treat the day as a holiday, and women could be seen on a sunny Tuesday in the Romanian capital carrying flowers, the traditional gift. Elsewhere in Bucharest, women brandished a banner saying \u201cMarch 8 is for fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s call for only female lawmakers to address parliament on Tuesday included silence because there weren\u2019t enough women to speak. Of the 543 elected members in India\u2019s lower house, 12 percent are women.<\/p>\n
In China, International Women\u2019s Day is treated as a one-off where state media are fond of publishing photo galleries of \u201cBeautiful Women Reporters\u201d covering a ceremonial legislature.<\/p>\n
The Communist Party-run People\u2019s Daily made no mention of leadership roles in a front-page editorial Tuesday that said women \u201ccan not only help to make homes more pleasant and lively, but also contribute their valuable female perspective and efforts to the progress of the entire society.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Associated Press writers Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Dave Bryan in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International Women\u2019s Day on Tuesday celebrated women and their accomplishments, but it also offered a stark reminder of the gender divides in rights, representation and pay. The day carried the theme \u201cPledge for Parity\u201d \u2014 a phrase and hashtag born out of the World Economic Forum\u2019s recent projection that the progress on achieving global gender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4781"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}