Bridge Event

March 8th 2012 is the 101st anniversary of International Womens' Day. Celebrate by either organising your own bridge event, or join one that has already been arranged. This is the era when people-power can make a big difference and where the internet can unite people. You still have time to organise an event with 2, 20 or 200 people - it's still a show of support! Join together to buid the bridges of peace across the world today and show respect to those who started this day through the suffragette movement and womens' right to vote, over a centenary ago!

On International Women's Day this year (8 March 2012) Women for Women International is urging everyone to Join Me on the Bridge Event. In London there will be a march:
 

10:30am - Meet on south side of Millennium Bridge for face paint and banner making
11:00am - Photo call on Millennium Bridge
11:15am - Start marching! Entertainment along the route
12:00      - Arriving on Hungerford Bridge, crossing back over the river to the Southbank centre
12:30pm - Speeches, stalls and entertainment inside the Royal Festival Hall at the Clore Ballroom
 

Register at www.joinmeonthebridge.org - and you will receive event updates directly to your email box. Please note that this year we will be able to go inside the Festival Hall for speeches after the march which will be much warmer! There is almost certainly going to be a Soroptimist stall so do come and support it.

 

 

Commission for Equality and Human Rights

To mark the centenary of International Women's Day, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights has developed a special web page to collate the work they have done to promote gender equality for women and includes a centenary message from their Commissioner, Kay Carberry MBE, as well as special messages of support from the Home Secretary Theresa May and Shadow Minister for Equality, Yvette Cooper.

Kay Carberry said: "From the Suffragettes to the Dagenham strikers, many British women fought hard and made huge sacrifices to enable us to enjoy the rights we now take for granted; from the right to own and inherit property to paid maternity leave. International Women's Day is our chance to thank those campaigners and honour their achievements. However if today is about celebration, it is not about complacency.

"As the Commission’s triennial review report How Fair is Britain? and our forthcoming update to our Sex and Power publication show, we are still a long way from achieving equality. On too many issues, unacceptable inequalities remain: violence against women and girls, marked labour market segregation, the unequal division of care and multiple discrimination to name a few.’"

For more information, go to their website. 

 

Join Me on the Bridge

On 8th March Women for Women International (SI's partners in the quadrennial Project Independence four years ago) organised another Join me on the Bridge campaign to coincide with the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. Last year was the first global bridge campaign, when over 20,000 women, across four continents, took part in 108 different bridge events.

Women for Women International said, "Thank you to the thousands of you who joined us on a bridge on International Women's Day. There were 464 events in 70 different countries, which is a staggering show of strength and solidarity with our sisters in Afghanistan, the Congo and other war-torn countries. Please keep the photos and video from your events coming. These images are so inspiring. To view these or to add your own, please visit our Google Map. This was a day to remember and thank you for making it such a memorable one".

As last year, women, children and men joined together on bridges across the world, holding up banners, making a public statement that 'Stronger Women Build Bridges of Peace' and supporting women in war-torn areas. They called for women to have a greater say at the peace negotiating tables and for countries to honour the UN goals they have signed up to, to bring an end to violence against women in areas of conflict.

Women for Women International is noting the events, across the world, that Soroptimists are staging. Visit the relevant page on their website to see who did what. If you haven't yet advised anyone of your event, get in contact with them and let them know.

"100 years ago brave women stood up and changed the world for so many of us. Today, there are equally brave women standing up for equality in Afghanistan. Now is our chance to get behind them and help bring peace and greater security to these women. Women in Afghanistan must be fully included in the peace negotiations. Peace without women doesn't stand a chance, and the time to build peace is now - before the troops start withdrawing in June 2011.

"We're not asking for any new policies or laws. They already exist. We have UN Resolution 1325, and we have the Millennium Development Goals. It's time to act, and we're calling for everyone who wants to make a stand against the brutalities inflicted on women in Afghanistan, and in areas of conflict around the world, to join us on a bridge on the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, 8th March 2011."

Kate Nustedt, Executive Director of Women for Women UK, and organiser of the global Join me on the Bridge campaign.

Be part of it. One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything.