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It has been documented that International Women’s Day has been celebrated around the world since a German Marxist activist named Clara Zetkin in 1910 decided it was important at least once a year to mark the political struggles and movements for women’s rights. Zetkin probably did not however, imagine that in 2012, a marketing company in the US would launch a campaign to raise awareness of International Women’s Day by encouraging women to wear red lipstick. A campaign called Rock Your Lips, by the company AKQA, is encouraging women around the country today to practice their “power pouts” and post photos of their red lipstick adorned lips to promote this International Women’s Day.

Zetkin also probably would not have fathomed that in 2012, the right of women to have access to contraception would be a debatable issue based on the supposed tenets of a religious institution whose leadership has shredded its own morality for condoning wide spread child sexual abuse. Or that a government body like the Virginia State House would attempt to require women seeking abortions to submit to vaginal ultrasounds. Or that a prominent media figure – Rush Limbaugh – would rail against contraception by labeling an advocate a “slut,” and a “prostitute,” and demand that she post a sex video online simply because she supports employers being mandated to provide insurance coverage of the pill. The recent political discourse on women’s basic rights has degenerated to such an extent that women are left approaching this International Women’s Day with befuddlement and outrage.

Meanwhile, the United Nations just concluded its 56th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, focusing on the rights of rural women worldwide. And a new agency was founded this year, called the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. But much of the conversation around women’s rights this International Women’s Day seems to have been co-opted by business interests. ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest corporations, has donated more than $53 million to “spur economic opportunities for women.” Exxon is now collaborating with the United Nations Foundation to “identify the most effective global investments that promote economic opportunities for women.”

And, the apparently official IWD website, InternationalWomensDay.com, is a corporate-sponsored online hub of activities around the world celebrating the day. Web Banners advertising Scotiabank, and the African Development Bank run across the website, which also promotes under its Gender Initiatives Page, the numerous corporations that promote women’s rights. The website also encourages women to follow a link to “explore your development opportunities.”

But, around the world, women continue struggling with day to day issues of poverty and war, even as the global recession has been used as a justification for so-called austerity measures and violence has worsened women’s rights. In Afghanistan, US ally President Hamid Karzai this week endorsed a “code of conduct” drafted by a council of clerics that allows, among other things, husbands to beat their wives in certain circumstances. In Iraq, a country that has enjoyed comparatively better rights for women in the Middle East, so-called honor killings are on the rise – this week news erupted of a man who brutally tried to kill his three teenage daughters because he suspected they were having sex – two of them died.

GUESTS: Loretta Ross, founder and the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, Yifat Susskind, Executive Director of Madre, is an international women’s human rights organization that works in partnership with community-based women’s organizations

Visit www.sistersong.org and www.madre.org for more information.