International Woman’s Day 2017

In March, we celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). According to the IWD homepage the World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap won’t close entirely until 2186. So, don’t hold your breath for that one. But there are plenty of good thing to celebrate in the meantime. One of them is that the B2B Magazine website is visited by more women than men. In fact, the split is 52.68% women to 47.32% men. Not bad when you consider B2B Magazine has over 60,000 search engine impressions per month and more than 500 unique visitors to the website each day. I also learned a new word. That word is ‘Soroptimist’ (coined from the Latin soror meaning sister, and optima meaning best. Soroptimist is perhaps best interpreted as ‘the best for women’). The first Soroptimist club was formed in 1921 in Oakland California. Since then, Soroptimist International (SI) has sought to bring about change to the lives of women and girls worldwide.
Through its global network of four Federations and its dedicated volunteer membership of over 75,000, SI is driven by its mission of transforming lives through education, empowerment and by enabling opportunities. In fact, the Soroptimist International Federation of the South Pacific, Canberra, held a lunch on International Women’s Day with guest speaker Kath Taplin, Executive Director of the Women’s Legal Centre. If you are interested finding out more about Soroptimist International then visit siswp.org. The following information is from the Australian Human Rights Commission:

• Women and girls make up just over half (50.2 per cent) of the Australian population.
• While women comprise roughly 46 per cent of all employees in Australia, they take home on average $283.20 less than men each week (full-time adult ordinary time earnings). The national gender “pay gap” is 18.2 per cent and it has remained stuck between 15 per cent and 18 per cent for the past two decades.
• Australian women account for 92 per cent of primary carers for children with disabilities, 70 per cent of primary carers for parents and 52 per cent of primary carers for partners.
• In 2013, Australia was ranked 24th on a global index measuring gender equality, slipping from a high point of 15th in 2006. More information can be found at www.humanrights.gov.au.