woman : /ˈwʊmən/
Everyone has their own different views about international women's day (IWD) and what it means to them. Taking our search to twitter, some people thought it meant posting a nude selfie with the caption Happy international women's day (*cough*Kim Kardashian*cough*), other's thought it to be about their husband bringing them flowers (re: the woman who stabbed her husband for not bringing her flowers for IWD), but yet, some people got closer and closer to the purpose of IWD when they posted tweets celebrating the first woman to win a nobel prize for maths, or articles about Melinda Gates' saying we need to address unpaid female labour, and even Emma Watson talking about the importance of the Hermione character for young women to see a girl who is slightly bossy, studious, and just a tad bit nerdy (I was in love with Hermione for my whole pre-adolescent and adolescent years).
So, what is IWD acutally about? Well the earliest recorded celebration of it was found to be February 28th 1909 in New York. It was organised by the Socialist Party of America in remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International ladies garment worker's union. This was called the "uprising of 20,000" as 20,000/32,000 members of the shirtwaist trade walked out within two days. As nearly all of these were immigrants and women, this challenged the preconception at the time that immigrants and women couldn't be organised. This strike was partially successful and led to improvements in workers' wages, conditions and hours, and this move is what led to the formation of IWD a year later in celebration and remembrance of this.
There is so much beautiful history surrounding IWD, about the meetings, conferences, how it began to be recognised in other countries as women and men sought out equality for women, from their right to work, to protests against sex discrimination, to their right to vote. Since 1977 when the United Nations General Assembly called for all UN member states to proclaim March 8th as the UN day for women's rights and world peace, there has been a theme every year. Whereas i'm sure everyone who tweeted has good intentions in their heart, we have to consider what we're doing personally to help the women's plight fr equality, even the littlest things. The theme for 2016 is "Project 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for gender equality" - alongside this theme, an independent company is running the hashtag #PledgeForParity. What does this mean to you? What could you do to contribute? And are you going to take those steps?
Happy International Women's day to all our women reading this no matter who you are. Remember, equality is around the corner.