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International Women's Day commemoration statement
Zimbabwe Youth Organisations Network
March 08, 2011

Every day, women are confronted with compounding problems of the society and they struggle to be able to surpass these challenges and to make ends meet for their families to survive. With their resourcefulness and their ability to adapt in various conditions, their roles in the society have evolved and have gone beyond just nurturing the families to become leaders, proffessionals in different fields, human rights defenders and bread winners.

Over the years, their roles in the society and environment have been more evident and important especially during these times of overarching crises that we deal with. But despite this, they still remain marginalized and still face discrimination especially on issues of accessing equal access to education, training and opportunities arising in the field of science and technology. As women become more active in their call for genuine solutions to the problems of the society, there is need to take stock of the milestones societies have made as they continue the battle for total women emancipation.

Today, 8 March, is the International Women's Day Celebration and this year's celebration signals the 100th year of victory and continuing struggle of women in the society. A number of actions around the world are happening right now, all with the same aspiration to emancipate women and to work towards genuine development of the people, to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women - past, present and future all around the world.

The first International Women's Day (IWD) events began in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911 with over one million attendees. 100 years later, IWD has become a worldwide activity, celebrated in many countries and is a national holiday in about 25 countries such as Afghanistan Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zambia. Recently American President, Obama, has declared the whole month of March as Women's History Month on Feb 28, 2011. We call upon the government of Zimbabwe to scale up its support of women's emancipation by also declaring the Day a Holiday and consolidate on the gains that women's movements supported by their male counterparts have achieved.

Women were suppressed in all matters and had no escape .These discriminatory days are slowly but surely passing by as women of earlier generations fought for the rights and freedom of today's women .For us as Zimbabweans International Women's Day must reflect on the significant battle of women and the legacy by earlier generations. The day must also highlight the remarkable contributions of women in all workforces such as law, academia, volunteering, sport,science and technology, education, disaster recovery, advocacy and many other fields. International Women's Day is the event to inspire commitment to the future challenges that women face in making further progress.

We call upon every Zimbabwean to find ways of commemorating this day and make noise on behalf of our grandmothers, mothers, aunties and sisters.

God Bless Zimbabwe.

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