Today is International Women’s Day. Here’s a few articles from women that consider a range of issues about the status of women (and men) in contemporary society. There are still many challenges facing women around the world – but few men seem to be writing about them. The closest I could find to an opinion piece written by a man for International Women’s Day was 007 in drag and this article in The Guardian about the gender pay gap in the UK. Come on gents – we need to do better than this.

• Annabel Crabb argues on The Drum “that the main reason women are under-represented in the senior echelons of just about any professional field is that they hardly ever have wives”.

• Also on The Drum, Julie Cowdroy notes that whilst women in the West enjoy many more freedoms than they did 100 years ago, this is not true across the rest of the world. In The Australian Ida Lichter catalogues the challenges facing Muslim feminism and argues that the west should do more to help.

• Even in the west some hard-won rights are in danger of being eroded. Amanda Marcotte on doubleX shows the absurdity of attacks by the religious right in the US on Planned Parenthood.

• Finally Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench feature in this advertisement specially commissioned for International Women’s Day

Elsewhere on the interewebz:

• As the carbon tax debate in parliament heats up Andrew Dyer on Unleashed offers a much more reasoned critique on the Government’s proposed carbon tax. The short answer: it won’t work on its own.

• Rodney Smith argues in the Australian that it’s about time for the NSW Liberals to start outlining policy. They’ve probably won this election, so now’s the time to set the agenda and start thinking about winning the next one.

• Spurred on by The Pope’s new book Dick Gross in the National Times takes a look at what the Bible says about who killed Jesus. Turns out it was the Romans all along.