Every year, on 8 March, we are told, “Happy International Women's Day (IWD)," as pink logos, corporate platitudes and hollow hashtags flood our screens. The same institutions that uphold patriarchal systems suddenly celebrate women's “resilience" as if enduring oppression is an achievement. But beyond this performance lies a stark reality: entrenched gender-based violence, systemic inequality and the silencing of women who refuse to conform.
Women across and within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continue to fight not just for basic rights but also for their very survival. Palestinian women in Gaza under occupation, Sudanese women fleeing conflict and Syrian and Lebanese women resisting economic collapse do not need symbolic recognition; they are leading struggles against deeply entrenched systems of violence and dispossession.
From resistance to co-option: How IWD was depoliticised
This year's IWD theme, “Accelerate Action", underscores a bleak reality: at the current pace, full gender parity will not be achieved until 2158. Yet, IWD was never meant to be a marketing gimmick. It was a radical cry for justice, ignited by working-class women demanding fair wages and dignity. The first Women's Day in 1909 was born from garment workers' strikes—a movement of resistance, not corporate tokenism.
What was once a political day of action has been stripped of its radical core and repackaged into a corporate-friendly event that serves power rather than dismantles it. We are told that progress is reflected in the rise of women CEOs and military commanders in diversity initiatives within fundamentally exploitative institutions while the systems that sustain violence and inequality remain intact. IWD no longer champions collective liberation. Instead, it spotlights the privileged few, reducing feminism to optics rather than a force for systemic change...