SPC joins the IWD global campaign
International Women’s Day (IWD) is held on 8 March every year around the world to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. SPC is committed to improving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, across all divisions as well as within the programmes and communities it supports. IWD is about upscaling promotions for gender equality during IWD while celebrating the achievements of women in all their diversity.

2024 Themes

• Global theme: “Invest in women: Accelerate progress” is the global UN theme, using the hashtag #InvestInWomen.
• SPC focus: Gender mainstreaming across SPC. How can we better integrate gender into SPC programming, including what support do we need to provide Directors/divisions to support them?
• Colour theme: for SPC’s IWD activities the primary colour is purple, with staff encouraged to wear purple and have purple decorations. As explained by IWDA: “purple is the colour of IWD…”

One-SPC event and Pacific-wide activities
Many divisions and programmes across SPC are already planning IWD activities for staff and partners, with the HRSD division leading on the coordination of One-SPC organisational activities:

1. One-SPC Event for International Women’s Day
2. Release of the new Pacific Mainstreaming Training Kit (training of trainers)
3. SLT members discussing gender mainstreaming in their programmes about the challenges of gender mainstreaming – what has and has not worked? (Video)
4. Watch Party satellite events. Each division, team, RO or country office is encouraged to organise its own Watch Party, to bring staff together to watch online and share ideas to better integrate gender into programming.
5. Funding support to SPC member countries. In 2024, SPC has committed to support 11 national campaigns for #IWD2024 through joint implementation. Through SPC, HRSD’s Pacific Women Lead at SPC programme is offering member governments up to AUD5,000 to lead their national campaign (and the option of an additional AUD4,000 for outreach that is education or training based for rural or remote communities).
6. SPC list of gender programming updated and re-published by the SPC Gender Community of Practice (COP) members.
7. SPC social media and possible feature story or Op Ed for Pacific media.

Background
IWD is a global campaign to celebrate and reflect on progress made, and actions still needed for gender equality. Some data from IWDA:

• 47,000 women and girls were killed by their male partners or family members in 2020 – and those are only the deaths we know about.
• 47 countries still have no repercussions for husbands who rape their wife.
• 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men.
• 45 countries do not have specific laws against domestic violence.
• About two-thirds of women in the Pacific have experienced sexual or physical violence in their lifetime – more than double the 30% global rate.

Source: Pacific Community