A Virtual March for Gender Equality
By Tere González García, +SocialGood Advisor
@globaltere
I would love to be peacefully marching the streets with you today — playing the drums and waving our flags for a more equitable future for women and girls. As I write this blog post from my desk in cold Washington D.C., I daydream about being in Mexico City organizing dance therapy sessions for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), in Cañada Real advocating for the rights of gypsy families, or in Mumbai planning a campaign in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In the context of the past year of COVID-19 restrictions and isolation, I find myself reflecting on my days of grassroots work — back when the SDGs did not yet exist, and my work to advance gender equality looked very different. How do we now continue or adapt our advocacy efforts when the “new normal” still doesn’t feel normal?
If you are reading this, chances are that you identify as an activist, changemaker, innovator, or entrepreneur. I dare to guess that you too are eager to get outside and to continue to spark change in the ways we once knew. Since we might not be able to do that just yet, I invite you to join me in a short virtual march for gender equality! I promise it will only take a few paragraphs.
A Persistent Challenge
Having grown up in Mexico City, I am no stranger to the deep gender inequalities and pervasive violence against women and girls that exist in the world. Mexico alone sees approximately 10 femicides per day. Machismo (patriarchal behavior patterns engrained in many cultures across Latin America and the Caribbean), compounded with corruption and drug cartel violence, disproportionately affects women, girls, and people who identify outside traditional gender identities. I grew up listening to stories about the hundreds of women murdered in Ciudad Juárez. For years, radio, TV, and newspapers were flooded with the news of a devastating wave of femicides in Juárez and across the country. Sadly, this was not the beginning of women and girls being murdered in Mexico, but simply when the situation started making the news. To this day, work against GBV in Mexico continues across all sectors and still has a long way to go, particularly now given the rapid rise of violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gender inequality in Mexico and around the world prevents women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people from realizing their full potential, participating in the economy, and taking on the opportunities they should be entitled to from birth. Persistent gender gaps negatively impact communities, businesses, and economies.
Though the impacts are felt across all sectors, responses have previously been siloed and rarely involved the private sector. Critical players such as companies now increasingly realize the role they can play in addressing GBV in the workplace. I think back to the women of Ciudad Juárez, whose stories shocked me as a child; most of them were factory workers (manufacturing is the main source of jobs in this border city). I wonder how the story would have turned out had there been a proper assessment of the impact of GBV in the workplace, alongside tailored policies and responses from employers.
The issue of gender inequality, and GBV in particular, is complex and requires cross-sector collaboration. I am hopeful that with the information and tools we have now, there is a greater possibility to drive change and leverage opportunities to protect lives and bridge gender gaps.
The March
If you were marching today for gender equality, what would your sign say? What would you chant? What message would you want to be heard?
I remember that around this time last year, we were all adapting or postponing International Women’s Day 2020 activities because of the pandemic. Experts were starting to talk about the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on women and girls that would soon become global. None of us knew that over a year after the first coronavirus cases were reported, we would still be dealing with the multidimensional consequences, but on a much larger scale, with efforts to respond to and cope with the exponential increase of school dropouts, job losses, care responsibilities, and GBV. International Women’s Day 2021 certainly looks very different as priorities and reality itself have shifted.
The landscape can be daunting, but it is clear that the world can’t afford undoing decades of progress toward gender equality. Before the pandemic hit, we were nearly 100 years away from achieving gender parity. While we might not be at the finishing line, rejoicing at achieving this milestone just yet, all of us are vital pieces of the process. Now more than ever, individuals, communities, companies, civil society, governments, and international development organizations need to collaborate to close gaps at a faster pace.
Gender inequality is not a pandemic. It is a system, and like any other human-crafted structure, it can be dismantled. The human rights imperative, the economic necessity, and the business case for a gender-equal world are loud and clear.
Today, I encourage you to share your virtual march message with friends, family, or colleagues. Take to social media or have a private conversation with someone in your network. Share your thoughts about gender equality in your surroundings, the steps you are taking to advance it, and the actions you would like to see from different stakeholders. Use the means of communication of your choice and perhaps forget the hashtags this time: your message is what matters. Achieving gender equality requires daily action from each of us — it will take more than a few viral moments on social media.
The Way Back Home
One of the most inspirational elements of a march is feeling the power of a collective voice, but there is also a crucial moment when the march ends: the way back home. That is the moment to digest, internalize, and make long-term commitments to take action.
What approach do you use to integrate a gender-equal lens into your work and daily life?
As we come to the end of this virtual march, I would like to invite you to reflect on how all layers of our identities intersect. It is essential that we acknowledge that each group of women and girls faces different challenges, and dynamics of power and privilege cannot be ignored. Race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, occupation, physical and mental abilities, socioeconomic circumstances, and immigration status play a role in the systems that rule our lives — from health care to employment. All of these layers can make us either more vulnerable or immune to injustice. Being aware of intersectionalities can allow us to analyze and respond to gender inequalities more effectively, either at the local or global level.
What can you do, within your specific context — in your neighborhood, your school, your company, your nonprofit, your local government — to make space for other underrepresented communities in the journey toward gender equality? How can you work with them as equal partners?
As you go back to your activities, let’s take a deep virtual breath together and pledge to acknowledge privilege and the dynamics of oppression, identify gender inequality within the systems we interact with, and take action to ensure the voices of all women and girls are never left behind.
There is no vaccine for gender discrimination, but there are certainly ways to prevent, respond, mitigate, and heal to move forward together.
Generation Equality, here we come.
About the author
Tere González García is a United Nations Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals and currently works at IFC, part of the World Bank Group, supporting the communications efforts to advance gender equality around the world.
