Below is my blog post on Local’s Festival‘s blog for a post on International Women’s Day and challenging their theme of 2021, which is #ChooseToChallenge.

You can also find the blog post here.

Happy International Women’s Day! What does #ChooseToChallenge Mean?

Happy International Women’s Day to all the amazing women who continue to lead, create, thrive, run businesses, be a kick ass boss, and more. While scrolling through your social media you may see people tagging, celebrating, and acknowledging women around them. Women who are leaders, women who have broken barriers, women who inspire others.

So, what is International Women’s Day?

According to the International Women’s Day website:

“International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality. 

Marked annually on March 8th, International Women’s Day (IWD) is one of the most important days of the year to:

• celebrate women’s achievements
• raise awareness about women’s equality
• lobby for accelerated gender parity
• fundraise for female-focused charities”

This year’s theme for #IWD2021 is “I Choose to Challenge.” What does this mean? From the International Women’s Day website they share:

A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.

We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.

Their campaign asks people to submit a photo of themselves with their hand up in support of Choosing to Challenge. This is an effort to call out inequality, encourage creating an inclusive world, challenge biases and question stereotypes” (International Women’s Day).

Four things that can we do to help create change?

1. Break barriers, encourage and continuing supporting women.
   Ask yourself questions and challenge these barriers that try to limit and belittle women. We are here to empower each other, lift each other up and create change in the community to build a different world for the future.
   Here’s a video on CNBC’s Make It, featuring Zandra John, a local tile setter in New York, breaking barriers about women working in construction and standing up to sexism in the workplace. (YouTube vide: Making $70K A Year As A Tile Setter In NYC | On The Job).
   
2. Fundraise for “female-focused charities”
   In the International Women’s Day website they list a handful of charities to support and raise money for (List of charities on IWD site). At Locals, we truly value giving back to the community and helping those around us. Here are some Canadian charities that support girls in Canada in effort to “dissolve gender stereotypes and ensure that young girls in Canada and around the world have access to life-changing resources” (Canada Helps).
   
   List of Canadian charities through Canada Helps: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/support-girls-donate-to-charities-for-girls
   Charities include: Canadian Women’s Foundation, Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment, and The Equality Effect.
3. Speak Up Against Inequality, Exclusivity, Biases and Stereotypes
   With this year’s theme, #IChooseToChallenge, we must continue to speak up and be a voice for women who cannot speak for themselves. Although we’re in 2021, there’s a lot of change to be done. Even when International Women’s Day passes, we need to continue being a voice for change – speak up to those we are misogynistic, sexist and chauvinistic.
4. Educate and LearnContinuing to learn about inequalities and injustices, reading books, watching movies and listening to podcasts. There’s so much media around us that we can access to learn more about what we can do to advocate for women. Let’s continue learning and educating others. Hello! Magazine’s “9 brand new shows and films to inspire you this International Women’s Day”Hive Life’s “Celebrate International Women’s Day With These 6 Incredible Podcasts”CBC Canada’s “9 great books to read this International Women’s Day”

Women can do anything.

Stay safe, beautiful, strong and empowered.

Love,

Your Locals Team

Written by: Erika Roldan