International Women's Day

International Women's Day – March 8

International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups

around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is

designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all

continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic,

cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate

their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine

decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of

history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate

in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata

initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French

Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity"

marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the

century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and

turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a

brief chronology of the most important events:

In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first

National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February.

Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through

1913.

The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's

Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights

and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was

greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17

countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish

parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.

As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year,

International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in

Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women

and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public

office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end

to discrimination on the job.

Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York

City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and

Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation

in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster

were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.

1913-1914

As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian

women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in

February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following

year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity

with their sisters.

With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose

the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political

leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The

rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the

provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday

fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8

March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.

Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global

dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing

international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global

United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a

rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and

participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly,

International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for

change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women

who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

The Role of the United Nations

Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and

widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights

of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945,

was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a

fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a

historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes

and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.

Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken

four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public

opinion and international action; training and research, including the

compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to

disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the

United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening

social, economic and political problems can be found without the full

participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.