International Women’s Day Annual Lecture 2025: Only a day, only a theme and an initiative?

On Friday 7 March, GENDER.ED and IASH co-hosted an Annual International Women’s Day Lecture by Naeema Yaqoob Sajid, Founder of Diversity+. GENDER.ED’s Undergraduate Intern, Mouna Chatt, reflects on the lecture and discussion. 

On Friday 7 March, Founder of Diversity+, Naeema Yaqoob Sajid, gave the University of Edinburgh’s Annual International Women’s Day Lecture 2025. Her title ‘Only a day, only a theme and an initative?’ problematised the risks of tokenism around International Women’s Day. She focused on gender parity and the blocks to achieving it, especially in relation to employment discrimination, career progression and gender pay gaps. Identifying this as a long-standing demand in the feminist movement, Naeema went through the history of International Women’s Day and its celebration. Noting how the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 – now exactly three decades ago – had motored International Women’s Day demands and celebrations, Naeema turned to the backlash on gender equality that has been seen in  many parts of the world, where insecurity, crises and democratic decay has undermined implementation of gender equality and even seen reversal of commitments. In this context, Naeema delved into the importance of marking International Women’s Day   and the relevance of having an overarching theme for the celebration. She explored this year’s multiple themes including “#ForAllWomenAndGirls and #For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment, asking whether these themes are all the same, or whether there are divergences between them. Asking each of us what would be our own theme, she encouraged us to view International Women’s Day as a moment to take yearly stock on progress in the move towards gender equality, and emphasized her own theme, ‘We can do better’, in pushing for change. 

Naeema’s lecture was followed by a Q&A session with the audience that touched upon the need for legislative changes to achieve gender equality, and the suggestion that we should reconceptualise gender equality in terms of gender equity and gender inclusion. Several audience members asked about the dilemmas facing feminism in our current political moment, and the conundrum that if we fight harder, we trigger backlash, but if we quiet down, we don’t get any progress. In the moment we are in, is gentle persuasion enough? What strategies that can we benefit from now? 

The Q&A was followed by a brief talk by the Director of IASH, Professor Lesley McAra. Then, Dr Radhika Govinda, the Director of GENDER.ED, announced the winners of the Yuan Changying Prize 2025. The Yuan Changying Prize recognizes outstanding ‘gender observations’ written by students (and nominated by tutors) in the pre-Honours course Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World. The course convenors and Director of GENDER.ED were on the judging panel. Heidi Bayley, Mara Bentzin, Maya Bayliss, Rodd Friswell, Anna Jefferies, Charlotte Genevieve Natusch and Emily Maria Hazim were nominated for the prize. Congratulations to the prizewinners, winners Anna Jefferies and Mara Bentzin for their excellent gender observations! Keep an eye on the GENDER.ED blog, as their essays will be posted here.  Rhodd Friswell also received an honourable mention.

It was great to see so many people come together to mark International Women’s Day 2025. 

We hope to see you again next year!