International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on the 8th of March every year. It is a focal point in the movement for women’s rights.

After the Socialist Party of America organised a Women’s Day in New York City on February 28, 1909, German revolutionary Clara Zetkin proposed at the 1910 International Socialist Woman’s Conference that 8 March be honored as a day annually in memory of working women. The day has been celebrated as International Women’s Day or International Working Women’s Day ever since. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8 became a national holiday there. The day was then predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted by the feminist movement in about 1967. The United Nations began celebrating the day in 1975.

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Commemoration of International Women’s Day today ranges from being a public holiday in some countries to being largely ignored elsewhere. In some places, it is a day of protest; in others, it is a day that celebrates womanhood.

History

The earliest Women’s Day observance, called “National Woman’s Day,” was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organised by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel. Though there have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, researchers have described this as a myth.

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In August 1910, an International Socialist Women’s Conference was organised to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annual Women’s Day and was seconded by fellow socialist and later communist leader Clara Zetkin, supported by socialist activist Käte Duncker, 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, IWD 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 honouring 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.

In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Saturday in February (by the Julian calendar then used in Russia).

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. The 1914 observance of the Day in Germany was dedicated to women’s right to vote, which German women did not win until 1918.

In London there was a march from Bow to Trafalgar Square in support of women’s suffrage on March 8, 1914. Activist Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.

On March 8, 1917, on the Gregorian calendar, in the capital of the Russian Empire, Petrograd, women textile workers began a demonstration, covering the whole city. This marked the beginning of the February Revolution, which alongside the October Revolution made up the Russian Revolution. Women in Saint Petersburg went on strike that day for “Bread and Peace” – demanding the end of World War I, an end to Russian food shortages, and the end of czarism. Revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky wrote, “23 February (8th March) was International Woman’s Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this ‘Women’s Day’ would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without date. But in the morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for support of the strike… which led to mass strike… all went out into the streets.” Seven days later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.

Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir Lenin made it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, but it was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965, by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women’s Day was declared a non-working day in the USSR “in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But still, women’s day must be celebrated as are other holidays.”

After its official adoption in Soviet Russia following the Revolution in 1917, the holiday was predominantly celebrated in communist countries and by the communist movement worldwide. Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri led a women’s march in Madrid in 1936 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War.

It was commemorated by the communists in China from 1922. In 1927, in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, there was a march of 25,000 women and male supporters, including representatives of the Kuomintang, the YWCA, and labor organisations. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the State Council proclaimed on December 23 that March 8 would be made an official holiday with women in China given a half-day off.

The day remained predominantly a communist holiday until about 1967 when it was taken up by second-wave feminists. The day re-emerged as a day of activism, being sometimes known in Europe as the “Women’s International Day of Struggle”. In the 1970s and 1980s, women’s groups were joined by leftists and labor organisations in calling for equal pay, equal economic opportunity, equal legal rights, reproductive rights, subsidised child care, and the prevention of violence against women.

The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day in the International Women’s Year, 1975. In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for women’s rights and world peace.

International Women’s Day sparked violence in Tehran, Iran on March 4, 2007, when police beat hundreds of men and women who were planning a rally. (A previous rally for the occasion was held in Tehran in 2003.) Police arrested dozens of women and some were released after several days of solitary confinement and interrogation. Shadi Sadr, Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh and several more community activists were released on March 19, 2007, ending a fifteen-day hunger strike.

In the twenty–first century, in the West, the day was increasingly sponsored by major corporations and used to promote feel–good messages, rather than radical social reforms. In 2009, the British marketing firm, Aurora Ventures, set up a “International Women’s Day” website with corporate sponsorship. The website began to promote hashtags as themes for the day, which became used internationally. The day was commemorated by business breakfasts and social media communications that were reminiscent of Mother’s Day greetings.

Around the world

The day is an official holiday in Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia.

In some countries, such as Cameroon, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Chile, the day is not a public holiday, but is widely observed nonetheless. On this day it is customary for men to give the women in their lives – friends, mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, colleagues, etc. – flowers and small gifts (although to many this seems cloyingly old-fashioned and rather to miss the point). In some countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother’s Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers. In Russia, the day has lost all political context through the time, becoming simply a day to honor women and feminine beauty.

In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, huge Soviet-style celebrations were held annually. After the fall of Communism, the holiday, generally considered to be one of the major symbols of the old regime, fell into obscurity. International Women’s Day was re-established as an official “important day” by the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2004 on the proposal of the Social Democrats and Communists. This has provoked some controversy as a large part of the public as well as the political right see the holiday as a relic of the nation’s Communist past.

The day is widely celebrated in France, as Journée internationale des femmes. To celebrate the day in Italy, men give yellow mimosas to women. Communist politician Teresa Mattei chose the mimosa in 1946 as the symbol of IWD in Italy because she felt that the French symbols of the day, violets and lily-of-the-valley, were too scarce and expensive to be used effectively in Italy.

In the United States, actress and human rights activist Beata Pozniak worked with the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California to lobby members of the U.S. Congress to propose official recognition of the holiday. In February 1994, H. J. Res. 316 was introduced by Rep. Maxine Waters, along with 79 cosponsors, in an attempt to officially recognise March 8 of that year as International Women’s Day. The bill was subsequently referred to, and remained in, the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. No vote of either house of Congress was achieved on this piece of legislation.

As of 2019, International Women’s Day will also be celebrated as a public holiday in the federal state of Berlin, Germany

In Pakistan, the Aurat March has challenged misogyny since 2018.

2020 “I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights ”
2019 Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change
2018 Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives
2017 Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030
2016 Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality
2015 Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!
2014 Equality for Women is Progress for All
2013 A Promise is a Promise: Time for Action to End Violence Against Women
2012 Empower Rural Women, End Poverty and Hunger
2011 Equal Access to Education, Training, and Science and Technology: Pathway to Decent Work for Women
2010 Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All
2009 Women and Men United to End Violence Against Women and Girls
2008 Investing in Women and Girls
2007 Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Girls
2006 Women in Decision-making
2005 Gender Equality Beyond 2005; Building a More Secure Future
2004 Women and HIV/AIDS
2003 Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals
2002 Afghan Women Today: Realities and Opportunities
2001 Women and Peace: Women Managing Conflicts
2000 Women Uniting for Peace
1999 World Free of Violence Against Women
1998 Women and Human Rights
1997 Women and the Peace Table
1996 Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future

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Year Observances

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March Observances

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