International Women’s Day

What the day is

International Women's Day is observed on March 8. It marks the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, and it remains a day of campaigning as much as celebration.

Its character varies enormously by country. In some it is an official public holiday; in others it resembles Mother's Day, with flowers and cards; in others it is a protest day with marches and strikes. All three versions are current.

Origin and background

The day comes out of the labor movement rather than from any government. Its immediate predecessors were garment workers' demonstrations in New York in the early 1900s and a proposal at an international conference of socialist women in Copenhagen in 1910, associated with the German organizer Clara Zetkin, for an annual day pressing for women's rights and suffrage. The first observances followed in 1911, drawing very large crowds across several European countries.

The March 8 date was fixed by events in Russia. In 1917, women textile workers in Petrograd struck and marched over bread and conditions on February 23 in the Julian calendar then in use, which corresponds to March 8 in the Gregorian calendar. The action spread, contributed directly to the February Revolution, and within days the tsar had abdicated. The date was retained afterward.

The United Nations began marking the day in 1975 and has set an annual theme since, which is why the observance now has both an institutional and a grassroots character at the same time.

Progress and its limits are both documentable. Legal barriers to education, property, credit and the vote have fallen across most of the world within living memory, while pay gaps, unpaid care work, political representation and rates of violence against women remain measurably unequal almost everywhere.

How to take part

• Read this year's UN theme, which sets what most institutional events will address.
• Learn the 1917 strike story. It is the concrete reason for the date and is often omitted.
• Support organizations doing the work locally rather than only posting.
• Look up the pay gap figures for your own country and sector.
• If you manage people, use the day to check your own numbers on pay, promotion and parental leave.