Female tales

The music video for Anne-Marie's Beautiful is very different from most. It shows a bomb falling from the sky, and then a young woman who starts her day by getting out of bed and reaching for her crutches. "Hello," she types on her computer. "My name is Dima. I am a runner from Syria. A stupid bomb cost me my leg."

That was in 2012, when Dima was 18. But she did not let it end her dream of becoming an athlete.

As a refugee in Lebanon, she went to the gym whenever she could to strengthen her remaining leg. Not until her family moved to England in 2018 did she get a prostheticAn artificial body part, such as a limb. limb. "It meant so much to me," she says,¹ "that I'd fall asleep cradling it in my arms."

Three years later, crowdfunding bought her a running blade - and she decided to compete in a half marathon to raise money for children who had suffered like her.

"It was incredibly tough; my prosthetic leg was rubbing so much that I kept having to stop and take it off," she remembers. "But crossing the final line was a feeling like no other."

Now she hopes to qualify for the 2024 ParalympicsAn international sports competition for athletes with disabilities. . In December, the BBC included her in its list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world.

Ibijoke Faborode from Nigeria was also on the list. She is the co-founder of ElectHER, an organisation which supports women standing in political elections across Africa. In Nigeria's recent elections, it provided backing for 35 women candidates.

Some Nigerian girls, she says,² are conditioned by their upbringing to take second place to men: "It is like a roadmap for you: grow up, go to school, when you are 18, 19, you start having a boyfriend; at 21, 22, you start preparing yourself so that a man can like you, because you should be married."

With more women in parliament, she argues, such attitudes can be changed.

Kimiko Hirata is a Japanese environmental campaigner. She began by working for green charities in the US, and then returned home to rally support for the first treaty to cut carbon emissions, the 1997 KyotoKyoto, once the capital of Japan, is a city on the island of Honshu. The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Protocol. After that she started her own charity, the Kiko Network.   

In 2011, a tsunamiA Japanese word describing a succession of waves caused when an earthquake or volcano displaces a large body of water. resulted in meltdowns at a nuclear power plant in FukushimaA prefecture in Japan that was the site of a nuclear powerplant meltdown in 2011. An exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant still exists ten years after the disaster. . This persuaded the Japanese government that it should build 50 coal-powered plants instead. But Kimiko realised that this would be disastrous for the environment, and started a campaign against them. So far it has managed to get 13 cancelled.

Jane Rigby is an American astrophysicistScientists who try to understand the contents of the universe. specialising in how galaxies evolve. She is a leading member of the team that launched the world's largest space telescope, the James Webb. In July 2022 she was invited to the White House to show the first pictures from it to US president Joe Biden.

As a schoolgirl, she says, she was inspired by Sally Ride, the first female US astronaut: "It was because of her that I realised that astrophysics was a profession, that physics was a subject girls could study, that NasaThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration, responsible for the US space programme. needed astrophysicists."

Yes: The situation of many women in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran is appalling. In Britain there are shameful inequalities in pay and job opportunities. The day helps draw attention to them.

No: The world has moved on since International Women's Day was launched. Women now occupy hugely influential positions and it is patronising to suggest that their role needs to be highlighted.

Or... Women's experiences differ widely from one country to another, but there are challenges they all have in common. An international day is a rare and valuable opportunity for them to come together.