Happy International Women's Day 2016 - March 8th 2016

[Aaron]

The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights.


This raises the debate, is there really such a gap between men and women in the workforce. I've never seen a "Women Only EBA" or Work Agreement, but maybe that's because I'm a Guy !!!!!

 

[Dallas]

In many countries the gender gap in the workforce is huge, going from western countries that still pay women less or give them less opportunities to other countries that will not allow women to work or physically harm them if they were to try.

Myself working for a Government department in Australia I don't see it as the vast majority of employees are women. However I've talked to women who work in other private companies who tell me how there's a glass ceiling for women and all the upper levels of management are men. The men of course will say that women don't apply for these jobs because they are putting their kids first yet I've sat in on interview panels and heard men say, well she's about to get married we can't employ her because she'll be off on maternity leave.

I used to work for another private company a couple of years ago and the women engineers used to be given the typing to do because the senior male engineers saw it as a womans job. I was furious when I found out but they just said, hey it's normal, we can't fight it we just do it.

I think the world has a long way to go before we reach a state of gender equality if not gender respect and Australia has some work to do not just in the work place but in human rights in general. That's just my view from my male perspective.

 

[Madam Jacqui]

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[Happy2]

Glad to see so many women on this site thought Womans day was worthy of comment