International Women's Day....was yesterday

Yesterday (8th March) was International Women's Day - and was a special occasion in that women around the world were celebrating 100 years of Women's Day.

While we're a bit late in posting about it, (though for many people it's still the 8th March, anyway) that doesn't mean that many of the options available to both men and women in terms of celebrating the day have been left behind. Jenny Baker offered the following bunch of suggestions - many of which you could do at any time of the year...

• Contact a woman who has inspired or encouraged you and tell her how much you appreciate her
• Join the Big Inequality Debate at http://www.weareequals.org/
• Follow Ruth Wells' example and take action against the objectification of women, or get involved with Object
• Get in touch with a younger woman who has leadership potential, or who inspires you and offer your support and encouragement.
• Use videos and information from The Girl Effect to raise awareness in your youth group - or among your friends - about the injustice faced by many girls around the world.
• Find out more about women around the world on Christian Aid's website.
• Get involved with Restored, Tearfund's new initiative to challenge the church on violence against women.
• Give the money you could have spent on a treat for yourself to help women in poverty around the world - why not give it here, here or here?
• Join Womankind's twitter campaign and tweet your #wish4women

Equality is better for everyone

Tapu Misa recently noted: Inequality, as epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue in their 2009 book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, hurts us all. As well as links to higher crime, ill-health, shorter life expectancy and a range of social pathologies, inequality drives a wedge between people, corroding trust and raising levels of anxiety. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised then that an annual Massey University survey has found we've become more tolerant of income inequality, even as we've become more unequal.

An Amazon reviewer points out: Within the 400+ pages of this book, [Wilkinson and Pickett] emphasize that it is not the poor and the deprived in isolation who suffer from the effects of inequality, but also the bulk of that nation's population. According to their findings. incidences of mental illness, for example, are 500% higher across the whole population spectrum in the most unequal societies than they in the most 'equal' ones. [My italics]

Misa also notes:

In his 2009 book Justice, the Harvard professor of philosophy Michael Sandel writes that while politicians have largely ignored inequality, philosophers have been debating the just distribution of income and wealth since the 1970s.

He argues an important reason to worry about the growing inequality of American life is that "too great a gap between rich and poor undermines the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires".

This blog has recently produced its 700th post. Wow.