This year’s theme, set by UN Women Australia is ‘Balance the Scales’. It is a call to action to transform our justice systems, amplify marginalised voices, and ensure equality is the rule, not the exception. When women and girls stand equal, families are stronger, workplaces are fairer, communities thrive, and society becomes safer for everyone. Balancing the scales means tackling inequality wherever it exists; at home, in communities, workplaces, systems, and laws. It requires collective action, ongoing commitment, and sustained resourcing.
International Women’s Day began in 1910 when delegates at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen proposed an annual day to advocate for women’s rights. The first celebration took place on 19 March 1911, with over a million people across Europe demanding voting rights, public office representation, and an end to workplace discrimination.
The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day in 1975, which had been declared as International Women’s Year. Two years later, the UN General Assembly invited member states to honor women’s rights and peace on a day of their choosing, with most adopting March 8. Since then, IWD has been marked annually on that date worldwide, with each year highlighting a specific theme or issue in women’s rights.
Learn more about the history of the global movement for women’s rights and gender equality here.
Australia first marked International Women’s Day in 1928, when the Militant Women’s Movement organised a rally in Sydney calling for equal pay, an eight-hour working day, and paid leave. The following year, the event spread to Brisbane, and by 1931, annual marches were established in Sydney and Melbourne, which continue today. These early actions laid the foundation for decades of advocacy, shaping Australia’s ongoing commitment to gender equality.
Despite the progress we have made, gender inequality persists in our communities and across the globe. The demands of those who marched as part of the first International Women’s Day in 1975 remain relevant today. We are still working to balance the scales, whether for equal pay, equitable access to healthcare, ending gender-based violence, or addressing the many other barriers women continue to face.
IWD is an important opportunity for us all to celebrate women’s achievements, but it is also a reminder of our responsibility to stay committed to achieving gender equality in all areas of our public and private lives.
Progress often comes with setbacks and even established laws and protections can be ignored or rolled back. That’s why it’s vital to stay vigilant to protect the rights we’ve secured while continuing to push for greater gender equity.
As climate-related disasters like bushfires, floods, and droughts become more frequent and severe, gender-responsive policies are more critical than ever.
Climate change is a gendered issue. Its impacts aren’t equal. Women, girls, and gender-diverse people often face greater health and safety risks, heavier care burdens, and reduced access to resources during and after emergencies. Climate justice is gender justice. Embedding this understanding in disaster planning and response is essential for equity, effectiveness, and real community resilience.
Even with the progress we’ve made, systemic discrimination and gender‑based violence continue to shape the lives of women and girls. For many, gender inequality is compounded by additional layers of disadvantage tied to ethnicity, age, ability, gender identity, rurality, social class, or sexual orientation.
Balancing the scales begins with acknowledging that progress has not been equal, and ensuring that future progress and decision-making include, and is led by, women from diverse backgrounds and experiences.
We need to work together to engage communities, mobilise decision-makers, and dismantle the barriers that stand in the way of gender equity.
Balancing the scales means ensuring everyone, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, class, ability, or sexuality, can participate equally in economic, political, and community life, free from fear of discrimination, harassment, or violence.
Our team has curated a collection of recommended IWD 2026 resources, including podcasts, videos, toolkits, frameworks, and strategies to help deepen your understanding of gender and climate justice.
We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of children’s books that support gender equality.
For millions of women and girls, justice is promised but rarely delivered. The statistics tell the story, for example:
–First Nations women experience systemic injustice at alarming rates. They are the fastest-growing prison population in Australia, incarcerated at 21.2 times the rate of non-Indigenous women, and are 15.7 times more likely to be held on remand than non–aboriginal women.
-Women make up nearly half the workforce yet hold only 32% of managerial roles. These realities show that equality is still not the default – it is something women must fight to access, with some groups having to fight harder for basic rights than others.
Gender justice means ensuring that people of all genders have equal rights, responsibilities, access, and opportunities, and that systemic barriers (rooted in sexism, racism, colonialism, ableism and homophobia) are dismantled rather than reproduced.
Climate justice recognises that climate change does not affect everyone equally. It demands fair sharing of burdens and benefits, protection of rights, and decision‑making power for those most impacted. It acknowledges historical responsibility and today’s unequal vulnerabilities.
When these two concepts meet, one truth becomes clear: Climate justice is gender justice because women (particularly First Nations women, migrant and multicultural women, LGBTIQ+ communities, women with disability, and regional and rural women) bear disproportionate climate burdens while holding the least decision‑making power.
Climate change in Australia is intensifying floods, fires, heatwaves and coastal erosion, and their impacts are not gender‑neutral. Women and girls (especially those who are already marginalised) are impacted the most. UN Women projects that by 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into extreme poverty – 16 million more than men and boys.
Such emergencies also amplify risks of gender‑based violence, which frequently go unreported during crises. Without gender‑responsive planning, every disaster thus turns into a setback for women’s rights and opportunities. Balancing the scales in this situation means recognising that climate justice is gender justice and ensuring that a gender lens is embedded into every climate plan, program, budget, and law.
The impacts of climate change on First Nations women cannot be separated from the impacts of colonisation. For millennia, First Nations peoples lived on and cared for Country – protecting land, waters, plants, animals, and sacred sites through sophisticated ecological knowledge systems. Colonisation forcibly removed many communities from their Country, severing cultural responsibilities, food sources, and ways of life, while watching newcomers degrade land, waterways and air.
Climate change compounds historical injustices. Rising seas and extreme weather threaten sacred sites, displace communities, and restrict access to Country, yet Indigenous women are often excluded from land and water decision‑making.
Balancing the scales requires resourcing for self‑determined climate leadership, restoring decision‑making power, funding culturally apprporiate programs, and ensuring First Nations women are not only consulted but are leading climate adaptation efforts.
Climate change and women with disability
Women with disability face some of the most acute risks. Barriers to accessible warnings, evacuation transport, and shelter design make injury and mortality more likely during disasters. Continuity of care (medication, assistive devices, support workers etc) often collapses in emergencies, leaving disabled women without lifelines.
Balancing the scales for women with disability means embedding accessibility into every stage of climate planning: captioned and audio warnings, Easy Read materials, accessible transport and shelters, and co‑design with disabled women themselves. Accountability matters too. Climate programs must report on disability inclusion and meet mandated accessibility standards.
Multicultural and migrant women face unique barriers that turn climate risks into crises of mobility and safety. Language gaps, visa restrictions and exclusion from emergency planning leave many stranded in high‑risk regions or dependent on employers for evacuation. Recovery efforts often overlook childcare, reproductive health and family violence services, compounding vulnerability.
To balance the scales here, disaster planning must be inclusive and multilingual, co‑designed with culturally diverse women, and supported by mobility justice measures that guarantee safety without jeopardising residency.
For LGBTIQ+ and gender‑diverse communities, climate disasters expose gaps in shelter safety, health care and relief access. Fear of discrimination deters many from seeking help, and inadequate shelter standards can put queer communities at risk. Plans that use a one‑size‑fits‑all approach ignore these harsh realities.
Balancing the scales in this case requires explicit LGBTIQ+ inclusion in disaster research, policy, privacy and safety protocols in shelters, and funding for queer‑led resilience networks. It also demands data and risk mapping that recognises where LGBTIQ+ communities live and how climate change intersects with identity.
Women in rural, regional and remote (RRR) Australia face compounded climate risks, such as isolation, limited services and existing gender inequality intensify the impacts of disasters. RRR women already experience higher rates of family and domestic violence due to reduced emergency services, community stigma and geographic isolation. This leaves them disproportionately vulnerable when disasters occur. RRR women often shoulder greater unpaid labour during droughts, floods and heatwaves, adapting differently and with fewer resources than men. Yet, Australian research shows that gendered impacts in rural climate policy remain largely overlooked.
Balancing the scales for climate justice for RRR women means closing service gaps, resourcing rural communities, and embedding gender-responsive planning into every stage of disaster preparedness and recovery.
Intersectionality is a much‑needed reality check in the face of climate change. Climate hazards, often collide with systems of colonialism, racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia. These intersecting forces magnify risks for many women while limiting the resources, access and supports available to them in moments of crisis. Climate impacts are not distributed equally, and resilience is shaped as much by social and structural conditions as by exposure to climate hazards.
Effective climate action must recognise that women’s experiences are varied and unequal, and that policies must address the diverse needs of those facing compounding forms of disadvantage and discrimination. WHLM’s Weathering the Change – Women’s Health Loddon Mallee framework advocates for climate planning that meaningfully captures diverse community voices and prioritises those most affected by disaster risk. It emphasises the importance of building workforce capacity across sectors to understand gendered health impacts, ensuring that emergency planning, response and recovery are informed by lived experience and grounded in gender‑transformative practice.
Balancing the scales requires centering women who carry the heaviest burdens and resourcing their leadership. WHLM’s approach makes clear that strengthening women’s participation is not symbolic; it is structural. Our model advocates co‑design with communities, dedicated funding for gender‑responsive initiatives, and governance structures that embed gender equity within climate and disaster systems. It also highlights the value of community‑led recovery, as seen in women‑led initiatives following floods and other extreme weather events, which have proven essential for wellbeing, connection and local resilience.
Climate action becomes more equitable and effective when diverse women are supported to shape climate solutions. This must happen through genuine decision‑making power, targeted resourcing and systems that recognise their expertise. This is the path to building communities that are not only better prepared for future climate shocks, but also fairer, safer and more resilient for everyone.
