international women’s day and its context in our society
Today is International Women's Day! March 8th 2022 symbolises over 110 years of female activism and transformation to make our world a safer, more equitable space for women. We would like to take this opportunity to share the 2022 International Women's Day (IWD) theme, provide some background on equality vs equity, share what we do at Arula to support our sisters and share the federal budget for women's equity.
At the conception of IWD in 1908, the notion of women's equality was surrounded around better working hours, better pay and voting rights. The collaboration and unification of women in 1908 and consistent push for women's rights have changed our space and in 2022 theme for IWD is #breakthebias. This means that individually we are all responsible for our thoughts and actions and through this, we have the power to challenge bias and discrimination and foster an environment of diversity, equity and inclusion for women's equity. Australian culture is ever-evolving and through applying this thought process in our everyday lives we play a key part in moulding our social context to foster women’s equality.
In saying this, it is important to highlight the difference between equality and equity. Equity is the notion of providing everyone with the tools they need to achieve a goal as opposed to equality which is providing equal access to the same tools. Equality and equity can be used interchangeably but in the context of women's day, we should endeavour to promote women's equity and provide equitable access to women to opportunities in our society that their male counterparts receive. This includes equity through equal pay, safety and opportunity.
At Arula we promote women's equity by creating bespoke prostheses which restore confidence and dignity to those who have lost their breasts post-mastectomy treatment. Our prostheses are free to all eligible women through the Medicare prosthesis reimbursement program. In the future, we aim to improve our prostheses through testing in preparation for our launch in 2022.
women's safety, women's economic security and women's health and wellbeing. It is determined that the budget is allocated towards initiatives such as the gender equality fund, UN women - ending violence against women and girls, Women’s economic empowerment, enhancing women's voice in peace building and leadership, gender data and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). Through these resources, it is evident that a platform is created to end violence against women and girls, advancement of female economic empowerment and enhance decision making, leadership and peace building for women.
We can see some wins in this space through the Gender Equality Mainstreaming Performance review of 2019-20. This statistic notes that ‘77% of DFAT’s (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) development cooperation investments effectively addressed gender equality during their implementation, regardless of their objectives. This extends across the fields of education, health, building resilience, effective governance and infrastructure, trade facilitation and international competitiveness.
As our sisters have done for the past 110 years, we must stand in solidarity to continue to promote equity for women. In doing this we can ourselves #BreakTheBias.