International Women’s Day: What is it and why do we need it?

This article has been updated.

Gender equality is central to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) – and a perennial item on the Secretary-General's annual priority list.

"We must fight inequalities by expanding opportunities for women and girls," António Guterres said when he outlined the UN's priorities for the year in January 2025.

The continued fight for women’s rights is marked by the UN each year on 8 March – International Women’s Day (IWD) – and the theme this year is: ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment’.

SDG5 calls for the world to "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls" by 2030. The UN's landmark Pact for the Future, adopted in 2024, states that gender equality is an "essential prerequisite for sustainable development", without which none of the goals can be achieved.

But, according to the World Economic Forum's latest annual Global Gender Gap Report, it will take another 134 years to reach gender parity.

IWD, now celebrated as a national holiday by countries across the globe, began life as National Women’s Day in the United States back in February 1909. The following year, in Copenhagen, Denmark, women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin called for an International Women’s Day to further their demands for equal rights.

International Women’s Day was marked for the first time in March 1911 – and the date was fixed as 8 March in 1913.

On 8 March 1914, there was a women’s suffrage march in London, calling for women’s right to vote, at which high-profile campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested.

The UN celebrated it for the first time in 1975, and in 1996, it announced its first annual theme: "Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future".

On the centenary in 2011, sitting US President Obama called for March to be known as Women’s History Month. He said: “History shows that when women and girls have access to opportunity, societies are more just, economies are more likely to prosper, and governments are more likely to serve the needs of all their people.”

The UN will hold an official commemoration event for International Women’s Day on 7 March at the UN General Assembly Hall in New York.

UN Women and the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs jointly publish an annual update on the progress towards SDG5.

In the latest – The Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024 – despite some progress being made worldwide, they find none of the indicators and sub-indicators for SDG5 has been met.

Although the share of women and girls living in extreme poverty has dipped below 10%, it will still take a 137 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty.

The Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2024 found a "lack of meaningful, widespread change" in the past year.

The index benchmarks 146 countries across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment) and tracks progress towards closing gender gaps over time.

While no country had achieved full gender parity, 97% of the economies included had closed more than 60% of their gap, compared to 85% in 2006.

Of the four gaps tracked, Political Empowerment remains the largest, with only 22.8% closed – which will take another 169 years to close.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the UN's Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action – the blueprint for women’s and girls’ rights adopted by 189 governments in 1995.

The UN is calling on governments to "act boldly and decisively for all women and girls" with six actions that can make a big difference to women's lives.

Reaching gender parity by 2030 will take an investment of $360 billion annually, according to the UN, but failure to close the gap is costing trillions.

Besides dedicated resources, reaching parity requires decisive leadership and this is where government, business and civil society can all play a role.

The Forum launched its Global Gender Parity Sprint 2030 at the Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos as a platform to bring together governments and organizations to accelerate global efforts towards achieving economic gender parity over the next five years.

The Sprint focuses on inspiring action across sectors through heightened visibility, impactful initiatives to advance gender parity in the workforce, senior leadership and pay, and new evidence at the frontier of the tech, green and care transitions.

As part of the Sprint, the Forum’s Gender Parity Accelerators are tackling these challenges in 17 economies, including Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico and Panama.

These accelerators have so far supported more than 1 million women in accessing economic opportunities and are mobilizing resources to address systemic barriers to gender parity. In 2024, action plans were launched in Ecuador, Honduras and Guatemala.

You can read more about the impact of the Gender Parity Accelerators here.