International Women's Day Address 2025

Please note:  all views presented in this address are my own.   This was clearly explained to the audience.  KT

International Women's Day started in the early 1900s as a radical act of protest and resistance, led by women rallying for better and fairer treatment.   Over a century later, this day has evolved to become a celebration of women around the world, their achievements and progress.

We can celebrate that women, in many ways, have more power and opportunities than ever before, at least in Australia.   

So what is the relevance of IWD in 2025?

In its early days, IWD was focused on the suffragette movement,  led by the forerunners of feminism fighting for emancipation, better working conditions and voting rights.    Australia held its first IWD in 1928, and the United Nations did not follow until 1975, formally adopting it two years later.  

While it is important to celebrate the many gains achieved in collective progress towards gender equality since that time, it is even more important to reflect on the issues and inequalities that remain.  Morning teas, pink cup cakes and corporate events keep the date and the issues alive, but are not sufficient.  "Celebrating" IWD is not enough.

2025's IWD is the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a policy framework adopted by the Un in 1995 as a plan to achieve equal rights for all women and girls.   The declaration contained 12 areas of concern - 12 promises made to women, none of which we are close to achieving.  

We have a long way to go.

 In some parts of the world, gender-based issues, discrimination and violence are even more prevalent than before, and some westernised countries are seeing issues we thought were long dead back on the debating table.    2025 sees a backlash against the gains made in past years, with the rights of women and girls to education, to health, and particularly reproductive agency and care being rolled back in not only the USA, but in other parts of Eastern Europe and different places around the world.   The 2022 reversal of Roe V Wade in the United States has resulted in a huge backwards step for women's agency over their own bodies. Some of our own politicians are agitating to have women's reproductive choices put back into debate. 

In 2025 we can reflect and see notable progress that has been made towards gender equality.

The gender pay gap has hit a record low of 11.5% (in 2024), there are currently more women in Parliament than every before, and Australia has improved its global gender parity ranking to 24th - up from 43rd.  

But despite this, many issues remain.

Australian women continue to earn less than men and, on average, retire with less superannuation.

They perform the majority of unpaid care work and are under represented in senior leadership roles.  

Rates of gender-based violence have also increased drastically over the past five years in Australia, and remain high globally.

In Australia, the issue of gender based violence is particularly concerning.  In 2024, 78 women were killed due to gender based violence.  (Check out Destroy the Joint's "Counting Dead Women" to put the faces to the statistics.  It's horrifying.) 

This violence is inextricably linked to gender inequality and misogynistic attitudes to women - just look at the toxic popularity and influence of Andrew Tate - a man who once said women should "bear responsibility" for their own sexual assault, who has been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.  It beggars belief that this man has more than 10 million followers on X - followers who blindly agree with his manifesto.

Nowhere in the world - nowhere, in no country - are the statistics on violence against women getting better.  In fact, in most cases, they're getting worse.

Research also shows that women from marginalised backgrounds experience disproportionate rates of violence and discrimination and face additional - or intersecting - barriers to achieving gender equality.   Our sisters from refugee backgrounds, with disabilities, who are transgender, at socio economic disadvantage, who are indigenous .... face much greater challenges that women who do not have intersecting experiences.  For this reason, the discourse around International Women's Day, and feminism in general, has evolved to view women's issues through an intersectional lens.  

While women in Australia continue to face inequality, women in developing or war torn countries face many additional challenges, including access to education, voting rights, reproductive rights and care, working rights and the ability to make their own choices about relationships and marriage.  In places like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gaza - women and girls can't go to school, and they're not allowed to be employed, or they find it hard to be employed; reproductive care is completely absent.  

In Afghanistan, under Taliban control, women are not allowed to drive or speak, attend school beyond Grade 6, wear restrictive body and face coverings,  have windows covered in their homes so that they are not visible from the street, and are not allowed to be depicted in photographs, newspapers or films.  They are forbidden to appear on their balconies, or have a presence on radio, television or at any public gatherings.  In fact,  place names that have included the word 'women" have been modified.  For example, "Women's Garden" was renamed "Spring Garden."  

Women have effectively been 'disappeared' in Afghanistan.

All those reasons make International Women's Day very relevant today.  

International Womens' Day is a reminder of the global experience of gender inequality and the work yet to be done across all domains.  

Women's rights are human rights.   

A strong woman stands up for herself; a stronger woman stands up for others.