This activity What Percentage? gets participants thinking about the inequalities that women across the world face and that there is still work to do to and it is important to choose to challenge to achieve equality for all in the future. This instructions below can be followed with a group, household or can be done by individuals as a good way to mark International Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day is celebrated worldwide every year. The day focuses on celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for on gender equality. Across the world on International Women’s Day groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality.
IWD happens every year on March 8th, the first gathering for the day happened in 1911 and is one of the most important days of the year to:
- celebrate women’s achievements
- raise awareness about women’s equality
- lobby for accelerated gender parity
- fundraise for female-focused charities
Find out more about International Women’s Day.
What to do
Form an imaginary ‘percentage line’ with 0 at one end and 100 at the other. You can be as creative as you like in making your line. If you are doing this activity as a group you could choose one end of the space to be 0 and the other 100 or physically mark out the line with string, rope or ribbon. If you are in a smaller group or at home you could draw your percentage line on a piece of paper. Read out the questions below. Once you have read a question participants can either move to stand or draw the place on the line where they think the correct answer is. You may want to draw extra numbers on your percentage line to help work out where to stand e.g. 25%, 50%, 75% etc.
Some of the statistics below are only rough estimates. These questions are still useful to start thinking about inequalities between men and women in the UK and across the world. After each question pause to see what each participant has guessed and ask why? before giving the true (estimated) percentage and moving onto the next question.
Roughly, what percentage…
- Of the population are women? – 50%
- Of the world’s wages do women earn? – 10%
- Of the world’s landowners are women? – less than 15%
- Of the world’s property do women own? – 1%
- Is the difference in pay between men and women in UK? – 15.5%
- Of MPs are women? – 34%
- Of reported rape cases lead to conviction? – 1.7%
- Of cosmetic surgery is carried out on women in the UK? – 92%
- Of women are estimated to experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime in the UK? – 25%
How did your guess compare to the real answer? How did this make you feel?
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is to #ChooseToChallenge Some of the stats above are still shocking and should be questioned and challenged to create changes in the future. What other parts of daily life could we challenge to make a more equal society?
“We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.” – IWD 2021
Take it Further
Find out more about International Women’s Day and how it is being celebrated each year and all year round by checking out their website.
If you would like to explore more about challenges gender inequalities check out Mind the Pay Gap to find out more and make a visual representation of the difference between what men and women are paid.
