It’s International Women’s Day – at 100

It’s International Women’s Day’s 100th anniversary celebration today. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the sometimes astonishing strides taken by women around the world toward gender equality–and the equally astonishing lack of true equality. The Guardian published an interesting list of “100 Top Women” today and also took the step (still, alas, pretty radical) of having its opinion page, on-line and in print, written entirely by women. Among the Guardian’s top women are some real pioneers; women who’ve created paths that millions of us, women and men, follow on. Among them: Wangari Maathai, the first African woman Nobel peace laureate–and Brighter Green Advisory Committee member; fellow laureate and women’s rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi; writer-activist Arundhati Roy; and the first democratically elected woman president in Africa, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Today’s also a day to give a shout-out to young women, the world’s future leaders. And for that, we wanted to share a picture of four of the ten young women in Brighter Green’s collaborative young women’s leadership program. They and their colleagues were recently at a training workshop in Arusha, Tanzania. The future? It’s in their faces–and minds and hands. Happy International Women’s Day.