Fighting for Gender Equality: How Far We’ve Come and How Far We Have Left to Go

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women all around the world and inspire future generations of women and girls to build on our progress and finish the job of building a just and equal world, for everyone.

The holiday, celebrated each year on March 8^th, began more than 100 years ago in Copenhagen, when a woman named Clara Zetkin proposed the idea as a way to celebrate the advancements women were making in the fight for gender parity – and to press for further progress in their still-nascent march towards equality.

In the years since, women have seen progress that may have seemed impossible for Clara and her peers. Women like Ella Baker and Rosa Parks served as leaders in the American civil rights movements, fighting for their own rights and for the rights of others. Dr. Isabel Morgan and her colleagues helped to pave the way for vaccinations against polio and other diseases responsible for millions of preventable deaths. Pioneers like Sally Ride have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles through space exploring distant worlds we once couldn’t have even imagined.

And today, we are surrounded by no shortage of brilliant, dedicated and accomplished women who inspire us with their achievements each and every day. Whether it’s Mia Mottley, leading the fight to protect the world’s most vulnerable against climate change – Janet Yellen pushing her counterparts around the world to think bigger in our mission to end global poverty – or Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala building a global economy that works for everyone, regardless of where they call home…

And yet, in spite of that, our work remains unfinished – and our progress stalled. It has been more than a century since the first celebration of International Women’s Day – and yet we are still fighting tooth and nail for every inch of our journey to equality.

Some important data, to put our steady – but slow – progress into context:

112 years after Clara Zetkin’s proposal was met with unanimous approval in Stockholm, women have still not achieved equality – and the UN estimates that at our current rate, it will take another 286 years to close gaps in legal protections and remove discriminatory laws necessary for true justice. But it took mankind just 112 years to advance from the first sustained flight outside of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to launching the first up-close exploration of Pluto in 2015.

In 1913, Norway became the first country to allow women’s suffrage. But it took an additional 102 years for women in Saudi Arabia to be granted that same right – and even now, that right only applies to municipal elections.

In 1917, Jeannette Rankin was elected by Montanans as the first woman to serve in Congress. This year, more than a century later, the 118^th Congress set a record for the most women serving in Congress – and comprise just 29% of America’s 435 elected members.

Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act of 1963 aimed at abolishing wage disparity on the basis of gender. Six decades later, that aim remains unfinished, as women earn only 82 cents for every dollar that men earn in this country.

In 1972, Katharine Graham was named the first female Fortune 500 CEO when she took control of the Washington Post – a critical landmark in the fight for equality. But today, trailblazers like Graham are still disappointingly uncommon. In 2023, for the first time in the list’s 68-year history, more than 10% - but only 10% - of Fortune 500 companies are led by women.

In 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland became the world’s first democratically elected state leader – finally shattering the glass ceiling that once likely seemed untouchable to millions of women and girls. But 43 years later, Vigdís remains the exception, not the rule. Following last year’s resignation of Jacinda Ardern, only 26 nations worldwide are represented on the global stage by women – accounting for a paltry 13% worldwide.

And in 1982, Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court Justice. Prior to her confirmation, there had been 101 justices appointed to the bench – all of them men. Decades later, only five women have been nominated to serve on the highest court in the land.

My point in bringing these timelines to your attention is not to discourage you – or to suggest that achieving true equality is not within our reach. I bring up these historic achievements to remind you that the men and women on this planet are capable of extraordinary things – but only when we commit ourselves fully to achieving them.

In the past 100 years, we have explored space, cured deadly diseases, studied the human genome, slashed global poverty rates, harnessed the energy of the sun and so much more. There are no limitations to what we can achieve when we set our sights on progress. But if we are not committed to the fight – if we don’t unite behind the mission of equality, then we’ll still be having these conversations in another 112 years.

Many people assume that International Women’s Day is only a celebration of women and everything they’ve accomplished. And that is certainly worth doing… But that’s not all that it should be. International Women’s Day must also be the day we pledge to fight for women the other 364 days of the year.

So, on this March 8^th – and every day for the next 112 years or however long it takes to accomplish our mission – let us dedicate that same energy, passion, intensity and creativity that mankind is capable of towards achieving the equality that women have been reaching towards for generations. Because, as we say at ONE, “no one is equal until all of us are equal.”