On the 8th of March people all around the world celebrated International Women’s day. As part of the DP curriculum students need to complete at least one CAS project. Our group, decided to focus on the importance of this day for our project. The project consisted of two parts: a bake sale to raise money for the UN women’s rights foundation and inviting a guest speaker from UF (Young Feminists) to come and present to the 9th and 10th graders about feminism.

The bake sale sold a variety of goods and the proceeds went to the UN Women’s rights foundation. We chose this organization because they use the funds in a way that gives girls and women the security they need to be able to learn and build a future for themselves. Women all over the world deserve equal rights, education, and security.

At the assembly, Viking Lindberg from UF, spoke about feminism and equality. He started off  by asking, ‘What does feminism mean to you?’ The majority had completely different understandings of the concept of feminism. Some students believed that feminism involved female world domination. Mr. Lindberg explained that feminism is the social, political and economic equality of both the sexes. Bringing awareness about feminism is so important today, mainly because the word has built itself a bad reputation during recent years. It is crucial that young people today understand what feminism really is and why gender equality is needed.

During the presentation the speaker displayed several statistics regarding the presence of women and men in parental leave and the playing field of equal rights for women and men. The students seemed to engage a lot more after seeing the statistics. There were mixed reactions, but it was great to see that because several of them were shocked by what they saw, they became more immersed in the presentation.

Overall, women’s day at SIS was definitely celebrated. Our project was not the only one carried out regarding women’s rights. Several other projects have also taken place that fight for specific causes regarding women’s rights, but in the end all these projects work towards the end goal: to promote women’s empowerment and achieve equal rights for all.