International Women’s Day – March 8, 2012

Theme: Empowering Rural Women – End Hunger & Poverty.

While I studied and worked at UC, I began celebrating International Women’s Day through programming campus-wide events like theater performances, film views, dinner and entertainment based on IWD theme for the residential halls, and tabling near the student union.  I have to say I LOVE how other countries celebrate it as a day to tell the women in their lives how amazing and loved they are.  This is a command (no if, ands, or buts about it)- LOVE the WOMEN in your LIFE.  Love all of us in between the female/male woman/man binary, while you’re at it too :). Love esp. to the mamas ;).

Here is more info on IWD and rural women in the US:

From UN Women, Facts and Figures (http://www.unwomen.org/infocus/rural-women-facts-and-figures/)

     Health

• Only one third of rural women receive prenatal care compared to 50 per cent in developing regions as a whole. (United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 and 2011 (New York, 2010 and 2011), available from www.un.org/millenniumgoals/reports.shtml.)

Other Resources

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp

http://www.raconline.org/topics/public_health/womenshealth.php