International Women’s Day 2026- Message from Chitose Arai, Chairperson, ICA-AP Committee on Women #GiveToGain
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2026, the Chairperson of the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific Committee on Women, Chitose Arai, shares a message with cooperators across the region.
Reflecting on this year’s global theme, “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” the message highlights the continued importance of strengthening women’s leadership and gender equality across cooperative movements in the Asia-Pacific region.
Below is the full message from the Chairperson.
Dear Cooperators,
Warm greetings from the ICA-AP Committee on Women, and my best wishes to you on International Women’s Day 2026.
Across the world, structural gender inequalities persist in all areas of life, including the right to self-determination, access to education, and participation in political and economic activities.
Against this backdrop, this year’s theme, “Rights, Equality, Action: For all women and girls,” promotes concrete actions to recognize and uphold the fundamental rights that women and girls are entitled to, to eliminate gender gaps and inequalities, and to realize a society in which everyone can live true to themselves.
The theme reflects the right to education, the right to freely express oneself, the right to access information, the right to live in safety, and the right to participate fully in society.
As we look ahead from the International Year of Cooperatives in 2025 to the next International Year of Cooperatives in 2035, it is essential that we move decisively from declarations to action.
We must place the lived realities of women and girls at the very center of our efforts, and ensure that our commitments translate into meaningful and lasting change.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, significant challenges to advancing gender equality remain. While some countries have established laws to promote greater representation of women, others have yet to introduce such frameworks. The absence of binding legal frameworks and weak coordination among laws, national strategies, and organisational efforts continue to limit effective implementation.
Since 1998, the ICA-AP Committee on Women has worked to advance women’s rights within cooperatives through advocacy, capacity development, leadership support, and policy dialogue with a strong focus on the development of rights-based and inclusive governance systems.
In 2023, the Committee developed a new Gender Equality Strategy.
Our work is guided by four strategic pillars:
- Economic empowerment
- Social empowerment
- Knowledge, education, and training
- Solidarity
Through these four pillars, we are advancing our activities in a strategic and integrated manner.
In 2025, the Committee carried out a study examining gender policies in cooperatives across ten countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The study shows that rights are strongest where gender equality is anchored in law and policy.
In the Philippines, the GAD framework mandates dedicated budgets, structures, and reporting, while Sri Lanka’s National Policy on Gender Integration in Cooperatives, 2023, provides a clear sector-wide direction.
Vietnam aligns its cooperative law with national gender strategies, and South Korea’s legal framework reinforces non-discrimination.
These examples show that when gender equality is formally recognised, cooperatives have clearer guidance and responsibility to act.
Justice and action depend on how these commitments are carried forward.
Nepal’s cooperative statute guarantees a 33% quota for women on boards, and provisions in India and Jordan show how representation can be secured in leadership.
Where cooperative-specific laws are absent, experiences from countries like Australia highlight cross-sector measures, such as mandatory gender equality reporting for large cooperatives, while Fiji and Malaysia advance change through department-level support and apex initiatives.
These lessons underline that real change comes from connecting legal recognition with representation and sustained implementation.
Taken together, the study highlights that while most countries in the Asia-Pacific acknowledge gender equality in law or policy, further efforts are needed to strengthen cooperative-specific measures that translate these commitments into real outcomes.
Let us not work on these elements in isolation.
Instead, let us connect rights in cooperative provisions, justice in women’s representation, and action in resourcing, implementation, and accountability.
In this way, we can build cooperatives that embody true equality—not only in principle, but in practice—and ensure the realization of sustainable cooperatives.
Going forward, the ICA-AP Women’s Committee reaffirms its strong and unwavering commitment.
We will safeguard the rights we have fought to secure, so that each of us may live freely and true to ourselves, and we will continue striving to further expand those rights. We uphold justice, grounded in ethics, reason, and the rule of law, the principles that ensure all people are treated fairly and equally in society.
And through learning, dialogue, and exchange, we empower ourselves to think critically and to turn our shared values into concrete action, for all women and girls.
Best wishes,
Chitose Arai
Chairperson, ICA-AP Committee on Women