The world stands up and cheers today for International Women's Day in 2017 because half the planet's population has been marginalized for most of recorded history. I supported this day by attending tonight's town hall at the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Representatives from Career Girls and the Global Fund for Women were on hand to describe their projects, along with a multimedia artist who shared examples of her work. It's easy to look at their success stories and think that gender parity is on solid ground. The global numbers show how much work remains to be done.
The OECD Gender Data Portal publishes data describing a global gender wage gap. We can go further than numbers by assessing the gap's impact on global systems. The World Economic Forum publishes its own annual Global Gender Gap Report. The gap in numbers is taking a long time to close, but closing it should be a moral imperative given the crucial contributions women have always made to the global economy. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (aka UN Women) describes the impact of female economic empowerment in detail.
Women don't need me to speak for them. Their work in the modern world speaks for itself, and deserves recognition.
