March 8th is International Women’s Day! Here is some history about the holiday and some good ways to celebrate!
History
International Women’s Day started as a socialist holiday in the Soviet Bloc, similar to Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. In other parts of the world, however, it is used to bring awareness to the political and human rights of women. The earliest observance was in New York on February 28, 1910. It was a direct response to and remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.
Later, an International Women’s Conference was held, where they decided on International Women’s Day as a good way to promote equal rights, including the right to vote, for women. There where various dates observed in Europe for IWD and the West didn’t really observe the holiday until 1977 when the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to set March 8 as the UN day for women’s rights and world peace.
Themes
Over the years there have been many themes for International Women’s Day in including “Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Girls” in 2007 and “Equality for Women is Progress for All” in 2014. This year the theme for the UN is “Make it Happen.” There is also a campaign being run separate from the UN using the hashtag #PledgeforParity.
#PledgeforParity
We have a ton to celebrate today, as women continue to experience social, economic, cultural and political achievements. Unfortunatly progress toward the ultimate goal of gender parity is slowing in certain places. According to internationalwomensday.org, “The World Economic Forum predicted in 2014 that it would take until 2095 to achieve global gender parity. Then one year later in 2015, they estimated that a slowdown in the already glacial pace of progress meant the gender gap wouldn’t close entirely until 2133.”
This group celebrating IWD wants everybody to pledge for parity this year. This means both men and women pledging to take a “concrete step” to achieve gender parity more quickly than the World Economic Forum predicted. They want each of us to lead in our own spheres and join to work together to allow gender parity to accelerate.
I took the pledge, will you? Either way, Happy International Women’s Day!