Women’s Rights Are Human Rights

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This 2022 International Women’s Day and Month, let’s claim “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”!

International Women’s Day, also known as IWD for short, grew out of the labour movement to become an annual event recognized by the United Nations.

The seeds were planted in 1908, when 15,000 women marched through New York demanding shorter working hours, better pay and the right to vote. A year later, the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Woman’s Day.

It was Clara Zetkin, a communist activist and advocate for women’s rights, who suggested the creation of an international day. She put her idea to an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910 – and the 100 women there, from 17 countries, agreed to it unanimously.

International Women’s Day was first celebrated in 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. But it wasn’t formalised until a wartime strike in 1917, when Russian women demanded “bread and peace”; four days into the strike the tsar was forced to abdicate and the provisional government granted women the right to vote.

The strike began on 8 March and this became the date that International Women’s Day is celebrated. Things were made official in 1975 when the United Nations started celebrating the day. And the first theme adopted (in 1996) was “Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future”.

It is worth noting that The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly Resolution 34/180 on 18 December 1979, and entered into force on September 3, 1981, in accordance with article 27(1).

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60610678#:~:text=It%20wasn’t%20formalised%20until,International%20Women’s%20Day%20is%20celebrated.

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