Live global coverage of International Women’s Day 2017 as events take place around the world to mark the ongoing fight for equality
‘We are international, we are everywhere’: women unite in global strike
What’s happening where you are? Let me know @LexyTopping
8.52am GMT
If you’re taking part in an event to mark International Women’s Day, we’d like you to share your experiences, photographs and video with us. If you’re not taking part in an event, you can send your messages of support too. You can click on the blue ‘Contribute’ button at the top of the live blog.
We recognise it may not always be safe to record or share your experiences – so please think about this when sharing your content with GuardianWitness.
8.49am GMT
Thanks to Rob Shaw who has directed me to the resplendent front page of Wikipedia today, which - among other fabulous women - is celebrating the achievements of top scouser Bessie Braddock. It’s worth checking out.
Bessie Braddock is the featured article on the front of Wikipedia today @LexyTopping https://t.co/dZpskpLWWk #InternationalWomensDay
8.27am GMT
In Sheffield in the UK protesters are using the Women of Steel statue [see my colleague Helen Pidd’s previous story on the statue here] to voice their opposition to the new Bishop of Sheffield’s views on the ordination of women.
The Women of Steel statue being used today by protesters opposed to the new Bishop of Sheffield's views on ordination of women @BBCSheffield pic.twitter.com/mRZId1yCR5
8.16am GMT
Hello from London! And happy International Women’s Day to all. Huge thanks to the incredible Claire Phipps who has put in a sterling shift for the sisterhood from Australia.
I’ll be here for much of the day and I would love to hear your stories and see pictures of how you are marking the day. Are you striking? Wearing a specific colour? Get in touch!
8.01am GMT
I’m handing over the blog now to my colleague Lexy Topping in London – she’ll continue to update you on events, protests and everything else as International Women’s Day continues its way around the globe.
Thanks for reading and for your comments and contributions – do keep them coming.
7.50am GMT
A key feature of 2017’s International Women’s Day is the call for “a day without women” – for women to take the day off work (paid and unpaid, at home and out of the home); to avoid shopping for the day,“with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses”; and to wear red in solidarity.
In America, the call to strike has been led by the organisers of the Women’s March, which took place across the US (and the world) the day after Trump’s inauguration.
The idea is to mobilise women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions. These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.
In embracing a feminism for the 99%, we take inspiration from the Argentinian coalition Ni Una Menos. Violence against women, as they define it, has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.
It would be tremendously effective if we could mobilise every single woman in the world …
A concern for me, as a very privileged, financially stable white woman who works from home … it’s very easy for me to say yes, everyone should go on strike but I want to be very cognisant of the fact there are very many women who cannot afford to lose one day’s worth of pay, let alone risk their job.
7.45am GMT
Brendan Cox, whose wife Jo Cox was murdered last year, has shared this picture of the Labour MP for International Women’s Day:
Jo was passionate, beautiful, fearless, compassionate& strong.A role model for her daughter (and son) on International Women's day #IWD2017 pic.twitter.com/hQIdLSuhYM
7.39am GMT
In the UK, International Women’s Day coincides – or collides – with the Budget.
Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti argues that austerity is a feminist issue, with women more likely to be single parents, earn less and work part-time than their male counterparts.
7.27am GMT
It’s 19 November, since you ask.
If you’d like to hear more about how International Men’s Day is on 19 November, can I suggest you follow comedian Richard Herring on Twitter, as he endures his annual feat of replying to all the people wondering when International Men’s Day is.
International Women’s Day is on 8 March: 24 hours (of the 8,760 annually available) set aside to celebrate women and all of their achievements. And people get furious about it.
Surely, you might think, you could only be cross about it because that definitely isn’t enough time to celebrate the achievements of over than 50% of the population. But no …
7.18am GMT
On 24 October 1975, the women of Iceland did no housework, to protest against their feeble, 5% representation in parliament. They technically went on everything-strike, but since their democratic exclusion was mirrored in the workplace, this functionally meant they stopped looking after their children and doing the washing-up (those who did have jobs worked in schools and nurseries, so those had to close as well). A staggering 90% of women took part, after the genius move of renaming it, not a strike, but a “Women’s Day Off”, dressing up stridency as me-time. Men had to take their children to work, which gave the event its other name: The Long Friday.
This action changed the face of Icelandic politics, delivering to Europe its first female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, five years later. But its significance in the wider feminist landscape is subtler, since that tension of where you situate domestic labour in the fight for equality is, if anything, more pronounced now than it was then. Feminism at home sounds a lot like nagging. The strike was underpinned by a movement, the radical Red Stockings in Iceland, and sister organisations across Europe making the case for paid housework.
Related: Sex bans, strength and solidarity: women’s strikes through the ages
7.06am GMT
Today is on course to be one of the most political International Women’s Days in history, Alexandra Topping and Molly Redden report:
From Thailand to Poland, the United States to Australia, the first Global Women’s Strike will see action on both the industrial and domestic fronts, with participants keen to show solidarity with an energised global women’s movement.
“We are united, we are international – and we are everywhere,” said Klementyna Suchanow, a Poland-based organiser of the Global Women’s Strike, adding that the walkout would put governments and institutions under pressure by giving women a voice that has long been ignored. “We are an army of women across the globe and we are no longer asking to be listened to. The world is being forced to listen to us.”
The theme for 2017’s International Women’s Day – which celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – is #BeBoldForChange.
Organisers of the Global Women’s Strike have joined forces with coordinators of the Women’s March and hundreds of human rights and women’s campaigners to capitalise on momentum in the movement in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Up to 2 million people around the world marched for equality in January the day after his inauguration.
Related: 'We are international, we are everywhere': women unite in global strike
6.55am GMT
The relationship between feminism and capitalism is a twisty one, but in the US Wall Street is making its own International Women’s Day statement with this statue of a girl facing down the charging bull.
Placing the diminutive, school-aged girl in front of the massive bull on the eve of International Women’s Day was a way of calling attention to the lack of gender diversity on corporate boards and the pay gap of women working in financial services, a spokeswoman for Wall Street firm State Street Global Advisors said.
“A lot of people talk about gender diversity, but we really felt we had to take it to a broader level,” said Anne McNally.
6.45am GMT
In Greece, the Eurozone’s weakest member state, the governing left-wing Syriza party has issued a rousing statement to mark International Womens’ Day.
After eight years of economic crisis and depression-era poverty, the ruling Syriza party elected to mark the day tapping into the radical rhetoric that first swept it to power.
The 8th of March is a reminder that in our country female unemployment, especially among the young, has soared. The shrinking of the social state brought about by the politics of austerity over the last decade has further encumbered women regarding care for children and old people.
6.32am GMT
In Afghanistan, Reporters Without Borders says it will today hold an opening ceremony for the country’s first Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists, in Kabul.
Afghan journalist Farida Nikzad will head the new centre, which says its aim is “to assist and protect women journalists, especially those working in remote parts of Afghanistan, who are more vulnerable”.
The creation of this centre is intended to send a strong message not only to Afghan women journalists, but also to all of the country’s women.
We want to support women journalists both in war zones and within the news organisations for which they work, to defend both their rights and their physical safety. To that end, we need the government and media owners to commit to do their part in what is a key battle for Afghan society.
In some regions, there are no longer any women journalists at all. Three of the 10 journalists and media workers killed in 2016 were women. Thirteen women journalists and media workers (including five foreigners) have been killed since 2001, and at least 10 have had to flee the country.
Afghanistan is ranked 120th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
6.20am GMT
Today is International Women’s Day. There is much to celebrate when it comes to progress for women throughout the world. There is also much to lament, both in relation to what still needs to be done and where the gains we have made risk going backwards.
Stillbirth, however, is standing still. The incidence of stillbirth is the same today as it has been for decades. Very little money or attention goes into research to reduce or prevent stillbirth.
Related: The incidence of stillbirth hasn't changed in decades. We need to talk about why | Kristina Keneally
6.14am GMT
Found a hidden feminist book? Do let us know where and what!
From midnight NYC time, book fairies around the WORLD will start hiding feminist books to mark #IWD #IWDoursharedshelf @the_bookfairies
6.04am GMT
It’s estimated more than 1,000 early years workers walked off the job today at 3.20pm – the time that women in Australia effectively start working for free.
5.47am GMT
India’s minister for women has sparked anger and ridicule after saying female students need curfews to protect them from their own “hormonal outbursts”.
AFP reports:
Many Indian universities inflict curfews on women while allowing their male students freedom to stay out at night, a policy that critics say is sexist and outdated.
Asked about the practice on the NDTV news channel, Manekha Gandhi said it was necessary to protect young women from their own hormones.
5.33am GMT
A flicker of controversy from the US, where the lights have gone out on the Statue of Liberty.
Was Lady Liberty joining the Day Without Women and showing her support for the global IWD strike? Plenty on social media seemed to think so.
The lights appear to have gone out at the Statue of Liberty...aside from the crown & torch. No word yet on what caused the outage.NA-157TU pic.twitter.com/4o4sDu8s8a
Some lights on the Statue were temporarily off tonight. Likely related to new emergency generator/Hurricane Sandy recovery project work.
5.27am GMT
As our Southeast Asia correspondent Oliver Holmes reports, the forced marriage of women and girls from Myanmar into China has been highlighted today by the Freedom Fund, a private philanthropic initiative dedicated to ending slavery.
The organisation’s CEO, Nick Grono, has been travelling around Myanmar during the past few days and sends this report:
China’s one-child policy, and the preference of parents for boys, means that by 2025-2030, an estimated 22 to 30 million Chinese men will be unable to find women to marry. This is creating a huge demand for foreign ‘wives’.
We heard devastating stories from women who have returned from China. One told us how she travelled to what she thought was a well-paying job in the north of Myanmar, only to be sold into marriage in China. She was trapped near Beijing for seven years, and had two daughters with her ‘husband’, only to then be deported by Chinese police to Myanmar. She has not had contact with her daughters since then.
5.11am GMT
Zehra Khan has much to celebrate on International Women’s Day. It is exactly four months since members of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) in Sindh province in Pakistan – of which Khan is secretary general – finally received legal recognition.
The province’s chief minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, signed a policy that means the region’s estimated 5 million home-based workers – the majority of whom are women – can register as workers and access benefits.
Related: International Women’s Day: Pakistan’s ‘invisible’ female workers celebrate new legal status | Zofeen Ebrahim
4.59am GMT
Raising a few eyebrows in Australia today is this IWD tribute by Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who has taken to Facebook (retweeted here by Labor MP Tony Burke) to praise Queen Elizabeth II.
Fair enough, to a point: plenty of people would applaud her role in public life. As an example of where “hard work and commitment” can get you in life, the logic goes a little astray. But the most jarring note is surely that dismissal of “demanding that people … artificially promote you simply because of your sex”. If Elizabeth had had a brother – even a younger one – she would not have been entitled to that throne at all, of course.
Beyond satire... #iwd #auspol #IHaveNoWordsLeft pic.twitter.com/xWkkG8lCfd
4.43am GMT
In Australia, more than 1,000 early childhood educators have walked off the job to campaign for equal pay in the “pink-collar” sector.
Dozens of childcare centres closed mid-afternoon on International Women’s Day, said to be the largest action taken by the sector in Australia.
Related: More than 1,000 childcare workers walk off job over pay gap
4.30am GMT
India has launched its first all-women cricket league to promote women’s cricket. The sport, which enjoys enormous popularity in India, has been dominated by men for decades. Founders say the want a women’s league that enjoys the same prestige as the male Indian Premier League, which has drawn cricket stars from around the world and has huge sponsorship from multinational companies and celebrities.
In a statement, founder Parul Jain said, “It’s important that young girls coming through can see cricket as a viable option to play at the highest level. The WCL #T20 League is expected to be of the same repute as the Indian Premier League (IPL) and women Big Bash League of Australia in support of women.”
4.16am GMT
An Australian women is running 3,000km across 184 countries in support of rape survivors following her own personal attack, Oliver Holmes reports.
Claire McFarlane began the campaign, named Footsteps to Inspire, in July last year in what she hopes will “remove the taboo around rape, support the healing process and ultimately make lasting change”.
“In 1999, I was brutally raped and left for dead on the streets of Paris,” McFarlane said in an email to the Guardian. “What followed was an arduous, long battle to find justice and it only came to an end in October 2015. Through sharing my own story of survival, I’ve become an advocate for survivors of rape.”
Leaving footprints of change! 25+ people joined me for the run in Phuket on 3/12.#BReAkthesilence#rape pic.twitter.com/MuqhcoYfH6
McFarlane says she is using beach running as a way to tackle the issue of rape in an empowering way. “I’ve chosen to use a very different medium to talk about rape: that is, adventure and sport. Sport unites us and often brings people together to make a stand for something they believe in,” she said.
Funds raised for the cause are donated to local projects or organisations helping rape survivors as well as part of the cost of the trip, in which McFarlane meets with NGOs working to combat sexual violence.
4.02am GMT
Some readers have been in touch to let me know what they have been, or will be, doing to mark International Women’s Day. Do feel free to contact me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps, or via the comments below.
@Claire_Phipps #internationalwomensday Be Bold for Change Wellington NZ pic.twitter.com/Wg2xdXSqcP
Tomorrow in Rome | 5pm Colosseum https://t.co/GMGZAXFAeC @Claire_Phipps @RomeWomen #LottoMarzo #nonunadimeno #daywithoutawoman #strike pic.twitter.com/vytXxgjtix
3.54am GMT
There was more unwelcome news for Japan ahead of International Women’s Day, reports Justin McCurry from Tokyo, with the release of a report showing that the country ranks 163rd out of 193 countries in female representation in lower houses of parliament.
The defence minister, Tomomi Inada; the leader of the biggest opposition party, Renho Murata; and the governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, are all women, but Japan trails behind all of its G7 counterparts in overall political representation, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The report, released on Wednesday, did note, however, that a record 28 women were elected to Japan’s upper house last July.
3.38am GMT
In Australia’s capital, the National Press Club hosted Kenyan educator and social activist Kakenya Ntaiya to mark International Women’s Day.
Ntaiya is the founder of the Kakenya Centre for Excellence, a boarding school for girls in Enoosaen. The centre requires as a condition of enrolment that girls are not subjected to genital mutilation or forced marriage.
Listening to Kakenya Ntaiya @PressClubAust #IWD @Claire_Phipps pic.twitter.com/FljVoHu9db
I went through the cuts and it was a very horrifying experience. There is no anaesthesia when it’s done, there is no medication, I bled, I fainted after that. I’m very lucky that I’m standing here today sharing my story. Many girls die.
I was determined. I went back to school.
I arrived there and 100 girls showed up. It was not just the girls, it was their parents, it was their grandmothers, it was the people who really thirsted for an education. So my ten became 30.
I have dreamed big. My girls are graduating this year. This year, 26 of them are finishing high school. They are going to university: this is the first time in my village that we are going to be sending 26 girls – not one woman, but 26 of them. That is the future of Kenya.
3.27am GMT
On Monday night, on Australia’s Q&A debate show, Mei Fong, a journalist and author of a book on China’s one-child policy, now based in Washington DC, said the ability to protest was “a great privilege”.
Fong praised the regular protests in America’s capital, “the heart of crazy Trumpland”, adding:
It is protests against the immigration ban, against mistreatment of women, and I bless my heart – it’s so wonderful when I see people chant, holding up signs in the streets.
You guys don’t realise how wonderful it is to be able to get out there and not be tear-gassed.
3.20am GMT
Two years ago, Li Maizi was imprisoned after she and four other young feminists attempted to mark International Women’s Day in China.
This year Li is spending International Women’s Day in the UK where she spoke at Soas in London last night and will address the University of Nottingham tonight. She has also written for the Guardian about her treatment – and the treatment of women – in her home country:
I often think of the day I was detained in Beijing. On the night of 6 March 2015, the police knocked on my door and took me to the station, where I was questioned nonstop for 24 hours. Later I was sent to a detention centre, where I was held for 37 days …
Two years later, is there any hope for the Chinese feminist movement? Definitely, yes. Since my arrest, there has been both progress and a backlash against women’s rights …
Related: I went to jail for handing out feminist stickers in China | Li Maizi
3.05am GMT
Maxine Beneba Clarke, Emily Maguire and two recently deceased authors, Georgia Blain and Cory Taylor, are among six authors shortlisted for the 2016 Stella prize, celebrating female writers in Australia.
The shortlisted books, announced on International Women’s Day, are Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain; The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke; Poum and Alexandre by Catherine de Saint Phalle; An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire; The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose; and Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor.
Related: Stella prize 2016 announces shortlist of six books by Australian women
2.57am GMT
Staff at Australia’s Fairfax media are holding a “Fairfax Sausage Fest” to highlight the 23.2% pay gap in newspaper publishing.
Journalists are donning their vintage finery – “retro-grade dress up day” – to tell management to stop living in the past and make women equal to men in terms of pay.
Retro(grade) dressups at the Age on #IWD2017 to protest the media gender pay gap. #femalejournos #dressyourpaygap #meaa #equalpay pic.twitter.com/mtPwgj4CK3
2.47am GMT
Justin McCurry reports:
The Korean Women’s Association United is holding its annual Korean Women’s Conference in Seoul today. The association says it is working “for the realisation of a democracy where everyone can enjoy equal basic citizenship rights regardless of gender, sexual orientation, origin or class”.
Despite the rapid economic growth South Korea has enjoyed since the end of the Korean war in 1953, the country’s women still earn far less than their male counterparts.
South Korea elected its first female president in late 2012 – the now-impeached Park Geun-hye - but gender disparity reigns in the country’s national assembly, where just 17% of the the 300 members are women, according to a recent study. That is still the highest proportion of seats held by women in the assembly’s history.
2.25am GMT
Over 30 women’s organisations in India will march in New Delhi today for the One Billion Rising march. The campaign started five years ago, on Valentine’s day, and spread across 207 countries, as women marched together to end rape and sexual violence against women. In Delhi the march had a particular significance, as the city was still reeling after the horrific gang rape and murder of medical student Jyoti Singh.
In 2012, after the details of Singh’s case emerged, India burst into protest, with candlelight vigils, and protests across the country. The case paved the way for small victories, including a special court to fast-track rape cases in the country, and a greater awareness of the country’s ingrained culture of violence against women.
2.17am GMT
In Australia, Dr Mehreen Faruqi, an MP with Greens NSW and a high-profile campaigner for access to abortion, began International Women’s Day with a breakfast for a few hundred women at NSW Parliament House. She became the first Muslim woman to join an Australian parliament in 2013, benefiting from the Greens’ affirmative action policy in a seat that had been preselected for women.
She said it concerned her that the Australian parliament’s upper house had the lowest percentage of women of any in Australia:
That really boggles my mind, I have to say. And being a woman of colour, there’s hardly any diversity.
That’s kind of a challenge as you do feel a little bit lonely, in that space.
You wouldn’t believe how many women have said, ‘good on you Mehreen, but I can’t do it’.
The amount of racism and sexism women are facing, especially women of colour and Muslim women and those that wear a hijab that are easy to identify – I don’t want us to go that way.
I want us to be the best country possible, and that is respectful, multicultural and inclusive. But the first step towards that is to actually acknowledge that racism exists.
1.56am GMT
Tokyo will host a women’s march from 3pm local time today, Justin McCurry reports from Japan.
“We have been inspired by the women’s marches which took place around the world [in January], and with the wish to walk together on International Women’s Day, decided to plan the following event and march,” the organisers said on the event’s Facebook page.
1.42am GMT
In Indonesia, a coalition of women’s right groups will be staging a march from central Jakarta to the presidential palace to mark International Women’s Day. Once in front of the palace, a diverse range of speakers will address the crowd, including female migrant workers – a group often subject to exploitation and abuse in the Middle East and across the region – as well as fisherwomen, female farmers and labourers, and victims of the recent and controversial riverside evictions in the capital.
There will also be theatre and music performances, as well as a dance performance by transgender students. Organisers from the IWD action committee expect a turnout of around 2,000 people.
1.24am GMT
Papua New Guinea has for some time been considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman or child. Rates of family and sexual violence are at epidemic levels, but many organisations – at community, government, and international levels – have worked hard to address it.
Ume Wainetti is the long-term coordinator of the PNG family and sexual violence action committee, and she says there have been great changes – hindered by a lack of follow-through and real support from the government.
At the end of last year we passed the [government] strategy on family and sexual violence, but we don’t know if funding will be made available to implement it.
We are screaming and shouting for things to be done but what support is being given for it is another matter.
1.06am GMT
Writing in Guardian Australia today, Greens NSW MP Mehreen Faruqi says the right for women to control their bodies is still under attack in Australia – not least by the continuing restrictions on access to abortion:
So many people are shocked to discover that abortion is still a criminal offence in both Queensland and New South Wales. While medical practice has advanced and majority public opinion has shifted in support of a woman’s right to choose, more than century-old laws remain unaltered in these two states …
Many doctors do not perform this procedure owing to this risk of prosecution. Services are limited, privatised and expensive, creating barriers to access, especially for rural and regional women. It’s not unusual to see intimidation of patients by anti-choice protesters picketing outside clinics with graphic images and even handing out plastic foetuses in an effort to shame them.
Related: Abortion must be decriminalised in Australia: we can’t take our reproductive rights for granted | Mehreen Faruqi
12.49am GMT
Today’s Google doodle for IWD highlights the lives of 13 women, as told by a woman to her granddaughter as a bedtime story.
All of the women featured, Google says, have previously featured in doodles of their own, but usually only within their home countries.
12.28am GMT
ABC News presenter Juanita Phillips has some advice for those perturbed by the Australian broadcaster’s all-female line-up today:
If the ABC's all women day makes you angry or uncomfortable, reflect on why. That's the point. And relax, it's only one day. Happy #IWD2017
12.17am GMT
China – home to around 675 million women – is unlikely to witness much IWD action today.
Two years ago, five feminists who were planning to put some stickers on buses to mark International Women’s Day were locked up by authorities on suspicion of “picking quarrels and creating a disturbance”.
We are guessing that it’s because we sent out some tweets calling for a women’s strike action against Trump.
12.02am GMT
All day today across TV, radio and digital, Australia’s ABC is celebrating International Women’s Day with an all-female line-up. Women will take over from their male counterparts on programs they host from NewsRadio to ABC TV.
News bulletins across the country and television programs will focus on telling women’s stories.
In a special IWD broadcast at 1pm, Radio National will revisit its groundbreaking women’s show Coming Out with a special Coming Out, Again, which will reunite some of the Coming Out cast from the 70s to the 90s, such as Julie Rigg, Nicola Joseph, Fiona Martin and Kath Duncan.
International Women’s Day is an opportunity for the ABC to draw attention to one of the great issues of the modern age. Gender parity is one of the biggest challenges facing the Australian, and the global, economy today.
The #IWDABC line-up on International Women’s Day represents one day of activity; however it sits within a broader ABC campaign focusing on equality and the recognition of women, and supporting the UN’s #BeBoldForChange initiative.
Thanks to @dailytelegraph for promoting our awesome all-female line-up for International Women's Day. https://t.co/kpjx7805i8#IWD2017 pic.twitter.com/njHg2qF7dc
11.52pm GMT
There are a bunch of happenings going on around Southeast Asia for International Women’s Day, reports our correspondent Oliver Holmes.
In Singapore, the iconic Vagina Monologues is on. The show started in New York two decades ago and has since been translated into nearly 50 languages to “empower women and men, stimulate dialogue and support social causes such as ending violence against women”. Tickets are sold out but you can jump on a waiting list here.
11.35pm GMT
A key feature of 2017’s International Women’s Day is the call for “a day without women” – for women to take the day off work (paid and unpaid, at home and out of the home); to avoid shopping for the day, “with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses”; to wear red in solidarity.
In America, the call to strike has been led by the organisers of the Women’s March, which took place across the US (and the world) the day after Trump’s inauguration.
The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions. These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.
In embracing a feminism for the 99%, we take inspiration from the Argentinian coalition Ni Una Menos. Violence against women, as they define it, has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.
It would be tremendously effective if we could mobilise every single woman in the world …
A concern for me, as a very privileged, financially stable white woman who works from home … it’s very easy for me to say yes, everyone should go on strike but I want to be very cognisant of the fact there are very many women who cannot afford to lose one day’s worth of pay, let alone risk their job.
11.17pm GMT
Today, Margaret Carey – director of an early childhood centre in Sydney, Australia – is striking for the first time ever. She explains why:
Women are an essential part of society. We hold together the household. We hold together the family. We care for our partners (though in a genuine relationship it is certainly not a one-way street). We care for our children. We care for others’ children. We care for our parents as they grow older. And we fill the jobs equated with caring. In my sector, 97% of us are women.
It is not because the work we do has no value. It is because the work we do has an intrinsic female association. ‘Care’ in any role should not be seen as of little value. If anything, it should be seen as value-adding to the role. Look at aged care workers, educators, nurses, teachers, social workers, psychologists, therapists, tutors, doctors. None of these professions are seen only as caring, but care is understood as intrinsic to their role.
Related: I'm striking for the first time in my life. As an educator, that's a big deal | Margaret Carey
11.08pm GMT
More of the globe is now ticking over into International Women’s Day.
Here’s Lebanon’s government palace in Beirut, illuminated purple for the day:
10.49pm GMT
When’s International Men’s Day?
It’s 19 November, since you ask.
International Women’s Day is on 8 March: 24 hours (of the 8,760 annually available) set aside to celebrate women and all of their achievements. And people get furious about it.
Surely, you might think, you could only be cross about it because that definitely isn’t enough time to celebrate the achievements of over than 50% of the population. But no …
10.37pm GMT
Incorrect assumptions are still being made that gender equality has been achieved, despite disturbing and comprehensive evidence to the contrary, an investigation by Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, has found.
Her findings include the experiences of more than 1,000 women she interviewed while travelling to every state and territory over a six-month period last year to learn about Australia’s progress towards gender equality.
It’s too easy to lump all women together as a homogenous group of white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual, able-bodied people, many who feel they are breaking down some of those barriers to equality.
But there are many different voices in this, and my voice is tied to having spoken to rural women, LGBTI women, older women, women with disabilities, migrant women and Aboriginal women.
Related: Australian report finds disturbing evidence of gender inequality
10.24pm GMT
Women from more than 40 countries are staging a strike from all work, paid and unpaid, to highlight women’s power within global economies.
But what if you can’t join them? Here are other ways you can show solidarity, from wearing red to avoiding the shops for the day.
10.12pm GMT
New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote but gender equality is far from achieved. The pay gap is of particular concern, having remained steady at about 12% for the past decade.
On current figures, it will be 45 years before New Zealand women are paid equally. That’s even though the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1972 – it has never been enforced.
It’s not about what you can get away with. It’s not about what she is willing to accept. It’s simply about you paying her what she is worth.
9.59pm GMT
Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia and current chair of the board of the Global Partnership for Education, writes today for Guardian Australia about the hidden women of International Women’s Day:
Considering that approximately 130 million girls worldwide are not attending primary through upper-secondary school and that women represent nearly two thirds of the world’s illiterate, we must ask: How many other innovations and inventions – great and small – have been lost to the world because so many minds are idle on the sidelines of human progress?
Related: With great female minds idling on the sidelines, how much progress have we lost? | Julia Gillard
9.45pm GMT
Today is set to be one of the most political International Women’s Days in history, Alexandra Topping and Molly Redden report:
From Thailand to Poland, the United States to Australia, the first Global Women’s Strike will see action on both the industrial and domestic fronts, with participants keen to show solidarity with an energised global women’s movement.
“We are united, we are international – and we are everywhere,” said Klementyna Suchanow, a Poland-based organiser of the Global Women’s Strike, adding that the walkout would put governments and institutions under pressure by giving women a voice that has long been ignored. “We are an army of women across the globe and we are no longer asking to be listened to. The world is being forced to listen to us.”
The theme for 2017’s International Women’s Day – which celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – is #BeBoldForChange.
Organisers of the Global Women’s Strike have joined forces with coordinators of the Women’s March and hundreds of human rights and women’s campaigners to capitalise on momentum in the movement in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Up to 2 million people around the world marched for equality in January the day after his inauguration.
Related: 'We are international, we are everywhere': women unite in global strike
9.33pm GMT
Hello from Sydney, where International Women’s Day is up and running (and for readers still in Tuesday time zones: think of this as a bonus preview).
We’ll be covering the full day live from our offices in Sydney, London and New York; and with correspondents chipping in from all over the world.
Continue reading...