Champion Female Athletes Urge Women to Step up Fight for Social Justice: ILO Celebrates International Women's Day

By ILO

Top female athletes in boxing, track and field and tennis today urged women around the world to take their struggle for social justice to new heights, as the International Labour Office (ILO) marked International Women's Day here and globally with events focussing on women in sports and the world of work.

"The punches that I land shake my adversaries as well as the foundations of our society", said Myriam Lamare, the World Boxing Association's current light welterweight champion from Marseille in an address to a woman's day event here. "A woman who can box is a woman who can fight - at once capable of giving life and of defending it, in the true sense of the word."

"I am strong and feminine, vulnerable and active", she said, adding, "Women are no longer handicapped by their vulnerability."

Ms. Nawal El Moutawakel, the first female gold medallist from Morocco and a Member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which also participated in the event here, said sports could provide the environment that women needed to excel.

"I ate and drank and breathed my sport and my trainers taught me to believe in myself", she said of the training that won her the gold medal in the 400 metre hurdles in the 1984 Olympics. "I was inspired and learned determination and discipline. Sports allow you to get to know yourself."

Argentine tennis star Gabriela Sabatini, who received the IOC's "Women and Sport" trophy for 2006 at a ceremony here, said in an interview, "Economically you need support and many times companies will follow men more than women and that's a disadvantage. I think we are getting a little better, but we are still a little behind in some countries."