Celebrate all the women in the world!

International Women's Day (IWD) celebrates it's 30th year with a UN backing. However, the idea goes back some 100 years and still we have not reached equality with men. There are so many injustices committed to women all over the world, every day.

In Asia some 90 million women have disappeared since the 1970. The disappearance is the difference between actual number of females and the number of females that ought to have been born and grown up, had families not decided to terminate pregnancies with female foetus or simpley kill young females. *

In Africa, the AIDS epidemic is turning into a female disease. In some African countries, 75% of HIV positive people are women.*

In south and central America there has been many un-solved murders (mass murders) of young women. *

And in industrialized countries, we are still far from equality. Men have higher incomes, they are more often in power positions, they do not share half the burden of housework or childcare, abortions are not legal or available and women get beaten and killed by their spouces.

And yet, there are so many supportive and wonderful men who do treat their women with respect and love and care - but they are still in a minority in the world. What will it take to make the attitude and behaviour of these men the majority? How long do we have to wait?

Today we celebrate all the women of the world - their lives and their hopes and their abilities and strenghts and perceverance. Still, I long for the day when the International Women's Day is not longer needed, when men and women walk side by side in equal relationship. That is when this world will really start to realize its true potential!

* source: Le livre noir des conditions des femmes, editor Christine Ockrent, as referenced in Dagens Nyheter online edition (dn.se) on March 8, 2007, article by Ulrika Kärnborg