International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.
International Women’s Day (IWD) also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality.
The IWD 2021 campaign theme is #ChooseToChallenge
“A challenged world is an alert world.”
The focus of the 2021 campaign is calling on everyone to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. Individually, each of us is responsible for our thoughts and actions – all day, every day. Each year, IWD inspires women and celebrates their achievements.
A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities, networking and social events. We can all make a difference by thinking globally and acting locally! And we can all do our bit to ensure that the future for girls everywhere is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.
A Brief History of International Women’s Day
International Women's Day has occurred for well over a century. Purple, green and white are the colours of IWD. Purple signifies justice and dignity. Green symbolizes hope. White represents purity. The colours originated from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the UK in 1908.
In 1908 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In line with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the first National Women’s Day (NWD) was observed across the US on February 28.
In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen considered the idea of an International Women’s Day which was raised by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany. This proposal was unanimously approved, with the first International Women’s Day subsequently honoured in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19th March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained to hold public office and end discrimination.
In 1913-14, Russian women observed their first IWD and in 1917, they held a strike for “bread and peace” in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers in World War 1. This strike resulted in the abdication of the Czar and the provisional Government granting women the right to vote.
In 1975, International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time by the United Nations (UN) and in December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed each year on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.
1996 saw the announcement by the UN of their first annual theme “Celebrating the past; Planning for the Future”, with different themes adopted in each subsequent year.
By the year 2000, there was little activity for IWD in most countries and feminism generally wasn’t a popular topic. In response to this situation, the internationalwomensday.com platform was launched in 2001 with the specific purpose of re-energising the day, celebrating and making visible women’s achievements, while continuing the call for gender equality.
2021 and beyond. The world has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation and significant improvements have been made across many fronts. However, women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women are still not present in equal numbers in business or politics and globally women’s education, health and experiences of violence are worse than that of men. So, there is still much work to do!
Diane Wilkinson
Chair, International & Foundation Committee