In France, Nicolas Sarkozy visited female workers at a bra factory whose jobs had been under threat, Carla Bruni was due to appear on a TV current affairs show to discuss women's rights and the Socialist frontrunner in the presidential race, François Hollande, promised feminist activists he would put equal numbers of women in government and improve equality.
We have seen a desire to improve equality in the workplace around the world.
The good news is that leaders can improve equality at their business and reap the manifold rewards of diversity, if they are willing to walk the talk.
Theresa M. May, the British home secretary, indicated in a speech last month that improving equality should be more up to the individual and less to regulation.
Ellen Pugh: Research has shown that the Athena Swan Charter is helping to improve equality in the sector and more institutions and their departments are signing up than ever before.
Leading political reform campaigners have demanded tough action to improve equality in Britain's devolved parliaments after a steep decline in the number of women candidates in the Welsh and Scottish elections.
Both parties' major policies were linked to addressing differences caused by geography: infrastructure to lower transport costs for the suburbs, health projects to improve equality of access across NSW and better funding to address varying education outcomes.
The statement included demands that Macedonia recognize Albanian as an official language, make changes in the citizenship law, decentralize local government, improve equality in jobs and schooling and scrap the preamble to the Constitution that mentions only "the Macedonian people".
Tim Cook has told a conference of business executives that American corporations have a responsibility to help improve equality, the environment and public education because of a lack of government progress in the past few decades.
When it comes to improving equality in financial access, though, Carlos Conde, head of the OECD's Middle East and Africa programme, emphasised that more work needs to be done to specifically target African women.
