International Women's Day, March 8, is a day not only to celebrate women's achievements but also to train future advocates of gender equality.
International Women's Day also shines a spotlight on issues important to women, such as access to reproductive health care and prevention of violence against women.
Celebrating women's achievements "does not mean we can lose sight of how much still needs to be done" to gain gender parity, U.N. Women spokesperson Paloma Escudero told VOA.
"Women remain far from equality in almost every sphere, and we can see that in the many wars and crises the world faces,” she said. “It is always women who are impacted first and worst."
The theme this year is "Accelerate Action" — a worldwide call to share "strategies, resources and activit[ies] that positively impact women's advancement, and to support and elevate their implementation," according to the International Women’s Day website.
The day's events will include rallies, fundraisers, lobbying sessions, performances and more around the world.
Meanwhile, efforts continue to close the gender gap — the differences between men and women in areas such as politics, education and wages.
A 2024 report by the World Economic Forum found that the world has closed 68.5% of the gender gap. At that pace, the report said, it would take about five generations to achieve full equality.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said recently, "From pushback to rollback, women's human rights are under attack."
Women continue to face "age-old horrors – violence, discrimination and economic inequality," Guterres said, and they are now also facing "newer threats such as biased algorithms" that are "programming inequalities into online spaces, opening up new arenas of harassment and abuse."
"Instead of mainstreaming equal rights, we're seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny," Guterres said.
International Women's Day emerged from the labor movement and campaigns promoting women's rights in the U.S. more than a century ago.
In 1909, the Socialist Party of America held the first National Women's Day, with meetings across the country about women's issues such as better pay, the right to vote and gender equality.
Inspired by their American counterparts, the International Socialist Congress held the first International Women's Day in 1911 with meetings in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, with more than 1 million men and women in attendance.
The United Nations officially recognized March 8 as International Women's Day in 1977.
Svitlana Prystynska contributed to this report.
