By Santosh Kumar Mohapatra
As the world observes International Women’s Day each year, celebration must be accompanied by reflection. Have the lives of women truly become safer, freer, and more dignified? Or are our commemorations louder than our commitment?
According to the World Health Organization, nearly one-third of the world’s women — around 840 million — have experienced gender-based violence. Of them, 316 million have suffered abuse at the hands of husbands or intimate partners and their relatives. Violence against women is not episodic; it is structural, embedded in homes, institutions, and attitudes.
The situation in India is deeply distressing. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (Report 2023, released December 2025) indicates that crimes against women continue to rise. Cases increased by nearly 33 per cent — from 3.37 lakh in 2014 to 4.48 lakh in 2024. The crime rate has climbed from 56.3 per lakh women in 2014 to 66.2 in 2023. This translates into 51 women becoming victims of crime every single hour.
A 2020 UN report indicated that India accounted for 45.8 million (4.58 crore) “missing” females over the past 50 years, primarily due to gender-biased sex selection, prenatal sex determination, and, to a lesser extent, post-natal neglect. NCRB data tabled in Parliament revealed that over 13.13 lakh (1.3 million) women and girls were reported missing in India between 2019 and 2021. This demographic distortion is not merely a statistic; it reflects a civilizational crisis.
In Odisha alone, the gravity of the situation is alarming. According to a written reply by the Chief Minister in the Assembly, 37,611 cases of crimes against women were registered in just 15 months, including over 4,000 rape cases. The capital city, Bhubaneswar, reflects a disturbing urban paradox — development without safety.
The economic dimension of inequality is equally stark. The World Inequality Report 2026, prepared by the World Inequality Lab under scholars such as Thomas Piketty, underlines that women work longer hours than men when unpaid domestic and care work are included — 53 hours per week compared to men’s 43. Yet women earn only 61 per cent of men’s hourly wages for paid work; when unpaid labour is factored in, their earnings effectively shrink to just 32 percent. In India, the female labour force participation rate remains extremely low (roughly 15.7 percent), and women receive only 18 percent of total labour income.
This invisible labour — cooking, cleaning, caregiving — sustains economies but remains unaccounted for in GDP calculations. Women in India shoulder a massive share of unpaid care work, valued at an estimated 15 to 17 percent of GDP — often exceeding key sectors like manufacturing or trade. The system extracts women’s labour while denying them recognition and remuneration. Such inequity restricts women’s career mobility, political participation, and financial independence. Women are often the last to be hired and the first to be fired. In education and healthcare too, girls frequently receive lower priority.
UN Women’s theme for International Women’s Day 2026 — “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls” — focuses on bridging the gap between legal rights and real-world implementation, aligning with the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The campaign theme “Give To Gain” of internationalwomensday.com advocates that investing time, resources, and advocacy in women’s advancement is not a loss but a powerful, multiplicative act benefiting everyone.
UN Women Australia has announced “Balance the Scales” as the official theme for International Women’s Day 2026, highlighting the urgent need for fair, inclusive, and accessible justice for every woman and girl. All three themes reinforce a powerful truth: investing in women multiplies social prosperity.
Yet slogans are insufficient. Laws without enforcement become empty promises; policies without funding remain decorative documents.
International Women’s Day must not be confined to celebration alone. It must become a day of moral reckoning. Rights must be protected. Justice must be delivered. Action must be relentless. Only then can equality move from rhetoric to reality.
The author is an Odisha-based columnist.