A brief timeline of International Women’s Day
1908: 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.
1909: On February 28, the Socialist Party of America first called for the celebration of a National Women’s Day, as proposed by one of its members, Theresa Malkiel, to commemorate female garment workers, who worked in oppressive conditions.
1910: Clara Zetkin, Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, tabled the idea of an Internation Women’s Day at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries adopted the resolution unanimously, and thus International Women’s Day (IWD) was born.
1911: Following the decision agreed in Copenhagen, IWD was celebrated on March 19 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
1917: International Women’s Day events in Russia snowballed into a general strike, that began on March 8 (in the Gregorian calendar, but February 23 in Russia, which then followed the Julian calendar), which ended with Czar Nicholas II’s abdication. Since then, IWD has been commemorated on March 8.
1975: March 8 was selected as the official day for IWD celebrations by the United Nations.
1979: The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), often referred to as the ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’.
1996: The UN announced its first annual theme for IWD—‘Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future’.
The theme for 2023 is ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’.
