International Women's Day: How it all started

[bananas]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Special-Report/International-Womens-Day-How-it-all-started/articleshow/4239999.cms

International Women's Day: How it all started
8 Mar 2009, 0103 hrs IST,

In 1869 British MP John Stuart Mill was the first person in Parliament to call for women’s right to vote. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote.

In 1910 an international conference of working women was held in Copenhagen. Clara Zetkin, leader of the women’s office’for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day, a Women’s Day, to press for their demands.

The very first International Women’s Day was launched the following year on March 19 (not 8 March)

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IWD is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts.

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[bananas]

1. Women's Day grew to month

http://www.masslive.com/living/republican/index.ssf?/base/living-0/1236327379248910.xml&coll=1&thispage=2

Women's Day grew to month

<snip>

Six years later, on International Women's Day 1917, Russian women, driven by poverty and starvation, joined forces to protest against the injustices under the czar.

Because the day of their protest fell on March 8 on the Gregorian calendar, that became the date on which International Women's Day has been observed since 1921.

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In 1978, through their local Commission on the Status of Women, a group in Sonoma, Calif., started a local Women's History Week. When the idea was introduced at a conference at Sara Lawrence in Bronxville, N.Y., it spread nationally.

In 1980 the group established a non-profit educational corporation called the national Women's History Project, which continues to this day.

Eventually women would get a month to celebrate their struggles and accomplishments. In 1981, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution to designate Women's History Month in March.

<snip>

[Captain Hilts]

2. It's a holiday where women are treated the worst. One bunch of flowers and all's even for the year!

It's like National Secretaries Day.

I know women in Russia sure see the hypocrisy of the day. Most I knew when I lived there loathed it.