WOMEN’S struggle for rights does not belong to either a single feminist or any one organisation, but to the collective efforts of all who care about humanity. Improving overall living conditions, including health, education and work, removing all sorts of disparities in the form of exploitation, fear or harassment, and promoting impartiality in all aspects of life for women have been the aim of collective efforts worldwide.
Though only partially achieved, most of the goals have been at least addressed well. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of challenges in terms of income parity and involvement in political and economic decision-making processes. Besides, there are issues like domestic violence and workplace harassment that need considerable attention and commitment to the cause.
In order to ensure sustainable development, it is imperative to follow the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of specific attention should be SDG 4, which is about ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, SDG 5, which targets gender equality, and SDG 11, which aims at creating sustainable cities and communities. It is significantly critical to make enhanced and focussed efforts for women’s participation in all these areas.
With this basic idea, the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’.
Undeniably, through innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age, it is possible to achieve gender equality and women empowerment.
Bringing women into the domain of technology is an artistic approach to solving the gender equality issue, as the lack of women’s inclusion has resulted in immense loss of revenue, especially for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) over the last couple of decades.
The success of women is inevitably the success of societies. There is no loser in such an equation. Let us take that path.
Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi
Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2023
