Minute for Mission: International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is a day set aside each year to address challenges that particularly limit the lives of women and girls. In observance of International Women’s Day, for 2025, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women invites us to observe the day using the theme “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.” 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which was and remains “the world’s most comprehensive visionary plan ever created to achieve equal rights for ALL women and girls.” Thirty years of progress toward gender equality have bettered the lives and hopes of women and girls around the world. Even so, war, violence, poverty, and gender discrimination challenge the progress made and hoped for.

International Women’s Day reminds us to reflect on our responsibility to make this world a just world for ALL. As people of faith called by God to care for one another, let us follow the U.N.’s call to “achieve a better world for women and girls.”

Note: The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the largest gathering on gender equality at the U.N. Learn more about the PC(USA) and Presbyterian Women’s participation at CSW69 by visiting pcusa.org/about-pcusa/agencies-entities/interim-unified-agency/ministry-areas/united-nations-ministry/commission-status-women.

Source: un.org/en/observances/womens-day

Carissa Herold, Marketing Associate for Presbyterian Women in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Inc.

Let us join in prayer for:

• Denise Hampton, Vice President & Controller, Finance & Accounting, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
• Jieun Kim Han and Myung Han Regional Liaisons for East Asia, Interim Unified Agency  

Let us pray:

Loving Creator, on this International Women’s Day and all days, let us strive toward gender equality so your daughters, and all of your children, can live in wholeness, using their gifts for the good of the world. Amen.