Today (8 March) is International Women’s Day (IWD), a global day which celebrates and highlights the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. 

IWD, which held its first gathering in 1911, also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity as significant activity is witnessed worldwide with groups coming together to celebrate women's achievements, rally for women's equality as well as fundraise for female-focused charities.

2021 – Choose to Challenge
Every year has a different theme, with ‘Choose to Challenge’ that of 2021, as explained on the IWD website.

“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we are 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 us all choose to challenge. Show your support and solidarity. Raise your hand high to show you are in and that you commit to choose to challenge and call out inequality.”

Handball family – get involved
IWD 2021 is encouraging people around the world to commit to helping forge an inclusive world by asking them to raise their hand high and ‘Strike the Choose to Challenge’ pose today and in doing so, share their commitment to choose to challenge inequality, call out bias, question stereotypes, and help forge an inclusive world.

Take a picture of your pose and share on social media using the hashtags #ChooseToChallenge, #IWD2021 and #StrongerTogether.

IWD Missions
There are six IWD missions for 2021 with one of key interest to the International Handball Federation and handball worldwide: ‘Applaud equality for women in sport’. To learn more about that, click here.

The other five missions include: ‘Celebrate tech women and innovation’, ‘Educate women on health choice decisions’, ‘Build inclusive workplaces so women thrive’, ‘Increase visibility of women creatives’ and ‘Forge women’s empowerment worldwide’.

Gender Equality Month and telling stories
IWD 2021 is part of ‘Gender Equality Month’ which is also goal number five of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a goal, currently being highlighted by IHF Partner’s hummel corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, HAND – ‘Handball for A New Destiny’.

With 209 National Federations forming the IHF, women across the globe play, work or volunteer in handball every day. In line with our mission to continue growing women’s handball and promoting women in handball, the IHF is dedicating the month of March once again to women involved in handball, highlighting the importance of gender equality both on and off the court through various feature stories on ihf.info.

For more information, visit www.internationalwomensday.com.