International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8th March every year. The day celebrates womanhood all across the globe. We celebrated gender equality all across the globe. Before the big celebration, we thought of taking you back to the time when it all began. Women’s Day celebrated the achievements of women in different fields. The day also focuses on gender equality and women’s rights. Through years, women and men have been compared on the basis of their income, education among other things. However, with time, women have managed to come a long way and broke all the barriers. International Women’s Day celebrates the strength of women and their achievements.
The history behind this day dates back to around 112 years. In the year 1909, the Socialist Party of America celebrated this day when around 15,000 women came along and protested low pay, long work hours and lack of voting rights in New York. It was in the year 1911 when Russia started celebrating the day on 8th March.
The earliest Women’s Day observance, called “National Woman’s Day, was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel.There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers Kandel and Picq have described this as a myth created to
The history behind this day dates back to around 112 years. In the year 1909, the Socialist Party of America celebrated this day when around 15,000 women came along and protested low pay, long work hours and lack of voting rights in New York. It was in the year 1911 when Russia started celebrating the day on 8th March. The earliest Women’s Day observance, called “National Woman’s Day, was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel. There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers Kandel and Picq have described this as a myth created to “detach International Women’s Day from its Soviet history in order to give it a more international origin”.
In August 1910, an International Socialist Women’s Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German delegates Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, Paula Thiede and others proposed the establishment of an annual “Women’s Day”, although no date was specified at that conference. Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women.
The following year on March 19, 1911, International women’s day was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations. In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honoring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Women demanded that they be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination. The Americans continued to celebrate National Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February. Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women’s Day 1975 in Sydney.
In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Saturday in February In 1914, International Women’s Day was held on March 8 in Germany, possibly because that day was a Sunday, and now it is always held on March 8 in all countries.
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