International Women’s Day is a day that celebrates ‘the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women’ whilst also trying to call for equality in society where men and women are treated equally and fairly.
It’s a day where women celebrate achievements and more importantly try and raise awareness of equality – https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Activity/15586/The-history-of-IWD
The first IWD came in 1909, and it has grown each year to the massive event we know it as now. In 2001 the internationalwomensday.complatform was launched to try and reenergise the day while continuing the call for accelerating gender parity.
Speaking about international mens day (which takes place on the 19th November) on IWD isn’t in the spirit of the occasion because one of the purposes of IWD is to try and campaign for equality in a number of aspects of every day life with men so mentioning IMD is rather insensitive as it contradicts the purpose of IWD.
Listening to Sarra Elgan of BT Sport and S4c she spoke about times where she’s had criticism online purely because of her gender and spoke about Sonja McLaughlan and the sheer levels of abuse she received after the Wales vs England post match press conference just last week.
This tells me that women working in the media are more susceptible to receiving online abuse from trolls on social media as some people wrongly think that they’re not worthy of doing the job they are doing and so people are quick to pounce and dish out abuse if they’re not happy with what they’ve done, compared to men who often don’t receive the same levels of abuse on social media.
This goes to show that days like International Women’s Day continue to be as important as ever in the battle for equality and in the battle for all women to have their voice heard.
AWC SPORT 