Celebrating International Women’s Day

The themes for the International Women’s Day 2025 are Accelerate Action, March Forward, and For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment. These themes highlight the need for urgent action to make considerable progress in our pursuit of gender parity.

They also demand equal rights for women and girls, as well as celebrate the women who empower other women: women who forge the path for and inspire the younger generation.

Whatever theme you choose to align with today, International Women’s Day will, at its core, remain a day to celebrate women for their achievements in and contributions to cultural, political, economic and social life as well as shed light on the challenges women face in their quest to contribute and to achieve.

We all know these challenges (we are loud about the issues we face) but I’ll list out a few for those in the back.

• Child Marriage
• Gender disparity
• Gender-based violence
• Female genital mutilation

Here’s what these mean, in case they’re foreign terms to you.

Child marriage is any marriage in which one or both spouses is under the legal age of consent. I.e. a twelve year old girl and her thirty-one year old ‘hubby’.

Children should be children. Not wives. Not mothers. Children should be children. Allowed to play house (emphasis on play), allowed to fall, allowed to get up, allowed to grow. Child marriage is child abuse and is almost always disastrous to the child married off by the adults who are supposed to protect her. Child brides usually lack access to education and when they get old enough, career opportunities. They are also more at risk for domestic violence and morbidity due to sexual intercourse and pregnancies before the age of maturation. Let girls be girls.

Statistical differences (gaps) between men and women in terms of access to resources, rights and opportunities. Women have always had the shorter end of this stick. Gender disparity is seen in education, income, healthcare and leadership amongst others.

You know it still happens. You know women are underrepresented in politics and get passed up for leadership positions in the workplace. You know some people still believe the girl child should not be educated despite the right to education being a human right.

There are still men who are of the opinion that a woman does not deserve to be paid the same wages as a man doing the same work because she has no family to feed. In essence, put in your blood and sweet while working but since you have no dependents and are therefore at a risk of spending your money frivolously, you do not deserve to get paid your dues.

I’m sure you’ve heard the question ‘what will she even do with all that money?’ when referring to women getting paid. It happens, and today is a good day to amplify our voices and demand a stop to this. Brother Nwachukwu, abegi don’t be sleeping on her salary.

You hear this one every time. Every time the community gossip is about Brother Uduak hitting sister Temi across the face, every time the issue of rape becomes hot gist on the streets of twitter. You would think these topics would be addressed properly until you sit to listen and hear men blame, shame, and spew vitriol all in a bid to silence or poke holes in these stories. No, hitting sister Temi is not you asserting dominance, it is you being a big bully and an even bigger fool. And it must stop.

Just recently, I was watching a Cruise video on YouTube where a participant said she did not enjoy sex with her husband because she had undergone female genital mutilation. I was aghast. Female genital mutilation is the partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia. It is a harmful cultural practice done for a number of reasons, a major one being to prevent women from being sexually active before marriage. ‘Sure-fire way to prevent your daughters from being promiscuous: cut off their labia, slash off their clitoris.’

Of course there is no evidence backing the claim, except the consequence of traumatising the victim, making them frigid, or decreasing their sex drive and pleasure (even inside marriage, all ye proponents of FGM). The gag (if FGM was even remotely funny) is that FGM pushes a few victims to search for the elusive sexual pleasure it denies them, causing them to become ‘promiscuous’. The irony is sort of ‘in your face’.

Today, however, we are not only amplifying our voices for these injustices to stop. Today, we are also celebrating women everywhere no matter their age, race, or socio-economic class.

We are standing in solidarity with the strong women who are pushing boundaries even when scared.

With the women who have taken the mantle to show the younger generation of women how to sing in a world designed to silence them.

With the women who birth and raise children.

With the women who don’t.

With the women who are flowers and song-birds and those who are cubes and silence.

With the black, the red, the yellow, the white, the brown, and everything in-between and without.

I hope today reminds you that you are loved. You are strong, beautiful and capable. You are the colour purple, the lush green of nature, and the dazzling white of the stars in the night sky.

chances are you know one or two women, so take time out today to appreciate the women in your life for being. For carrying the weight of the world and society on their shoulders and smiling despite it all. For adding colour to the world just by existing.

Happy International Women’s Day!