From Flowers to Menstrual-Flow Trackers: The Corporatization of Women's Equality and Wellbeing.

Abstract

For the discerning gift-giver, International Women's Day offers a number of merchandising options, ranging from the ubiquitous flowers to the more niche moisturiser that tackles insomnia and a highlighter to channel your inner glow. 1 Corporate appropriation of a day originally established to advance women's rights and universal suffrage would, presumably, have been an anathema to Clara Zetkin, the German socialist who first proposed a special Women's Day with an international character in 1910. 2 Zetkin and her colleagues might also have mixed feelings about the extent of progress in the global fight for gender equality over the past century. On the positive side, women now have the vote in all countries (although in the Vatican only male synod members can vote) and in 1975, March 8 was adopted by the UN to mark International Women's Day (IWD). However, the World Bank estimates that billions of women still lack the same legal rights and equal economic opportunities as men, 3 and inequalities continue along a range of social, political, development, and economic indicators. For example, in 56 countries women (but not men) are subjected to some type of constraint on their mobility, including 31 countries where a woman cannot obtain a passport in the same way a man can. 3 Although women's participation in tertiary education has increased globally, restrictive gender norms continue to influence what people study: gender gaps remain entrenched in favour of men in the share of graduate degrees in information, communication and technologies and engineering, manufacturing, and construction.