History of Women's Day

The International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups worldwide. That date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is a national holiday in many countries. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political, come together to celebrate their day, they can look a tradition of not less than ninety years of struggle for equality , justice, peace and development.

The International Women's Day concerns of ordinary women as makers of history and is rooted in 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 to end the war in the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.

The idea of an international day of women emerged at the end of the nineteenth century was, in the industrialized world, a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies.

Chronology

1909: According to a statement from the Socialist Party of the United States of America on February 28 was held in the United States the first National Women's Day, they continued to celebrate the last Sunday of February until 1913.

1910: The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, proclaimed the International Women's Day, international in character to honor the movement for women's rights and to help achieve universal suffrage. The proposal was approved unanimously by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date for the celebration.

1911: Following the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark and Switzerland, with meetings attended by more than 1 million women and men. Besides the right to vote and hold public office, they demanded the right to employment, vocational training and non-discrimination in employment.

Less than a week later, on March 25 More than 140 young workers, mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants, were killed in the tragic Triangle Factory fire in New York City. This event had a significant impact on the labor laws of the United States, and subsequent celebrations of International Women's Day is referred to the working conditions leading to disaster.

1913 to 1914: In the context of movements for peace that emerged on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day last Sunday in February 1913. In the rest of Europe, women held rallies around 8 March of next year to protest the war or to express solidarity with other women.

1917: In response to the 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike in demand 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. The growing international women's movement, backed by the United Nations through four world conferences on women, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts for the rights of women and their participation in the life political and economic. The International Women's Day is becoming more an occasion to reflect on progress, demand 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.