“Where there is a woman, there is magic.”........... Happy Women's Day!!!

           International Women’s Day (IWD) is a day to celebrate women’s social, economic, cultural and political achievements. It is observed on March 8 each year. Women’s Day has been observed for nearly a century, with the first celebration taking place in 1911.

          The day serves as a rallying point for achieving gender parity across the world. Globally, there is a lot of activity on this day as people join together to celebrate women’s accomplishments or to march for women’s rights.

Colours of International Women’s Day:

          Purple, green and white are the colours that represent International Women’s Day. Purple is associated with justice and dignity. Green represents hope while white stands for purity. The colours were assigned by the United Kingdom in 1908 by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

History of International Women’s Day:

          International Women’s Day has been observed since the early 1900s, during a period of considerable turmoil in the industrialised world marked by rapid population expansion and the rise of radical ideologies.

          Women’s persecution and inequality prompted them to become more vocal and involved in the movement for reform in 1908. Around the same time, 15,000 women marched through New York City, demanding shorter work hours, higher pay and the right to vote.

          A year later, on February 28, 1909, the first National Woman’s Day was celebrated across the United States, according to a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Until 1913, women continued to commemorate national Woman’s Day on the last Sunday of February.

          In 1910, Copenhagen hosted the second International Conference of Working Women. Clara Zetkin, German Marxist theorist and activist, proposed the concept of International Women’s Day. She recommended that every year on Women’s Day a celebration be held in every country to honour women’s fight for their demands.

          Over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s organisations and the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, unanimously approved Zetkin’s proposal. This is how International Women’s Day came to existence.

          International Women’s Day was first observed in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911, following a consensus reached in Copenhagen, Denmark.

          Later, it was decided that March 8 would be universally recognised as the International Women’s Day. In 1975, the United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day for the first time.

International Women’s Day 2022: 

          The stereotype that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, does not hold true when it comes to representing International Women’s Day. The global occasion celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women is actually represented by three colours: Purple, Green and White.

          According to the International Women’s Day (IWD) website, Purple, Green and White are the colours of International Women’s Day. The colours originated from the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the United Kingdom in 1908. The Purple signifies justice and dignity; green symbolises hope; white represents purity.

          The WSPU was a militant wing of the British suffrage movement and was founded in Manchester in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst. The WSPU, along with the more conservative National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), sought the right to vote for women in a country that had expressly denied women suffrage in 1832.

          In the United States, the purple, white, and gold combination was used by the National Woman’s Party. The organisation described the meaning of these colours in a newsletter published December 6, 1913, “Purple is the color of loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause. White, the emblem of purity, symbolises the quality of our purpose; and gold, the color of light and life, is as the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.”

          The colour white often found its place in the flags of the suffragist’s movement. Suffragists were often portrayed as masculine and ugly by the anti-feminist. In order to counter that anti-suffrage media image, suffragists wore dresses in parades that were often all white, with suffrage sashes. These white dresses symbolised the femininity and purity of the suffrage cause.

          Wearing purple on this day shows that you are joining other women across the world in solidarity to celebrate this special day which also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

          International Women's Day is not country, group, nor organization specific. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women's network, or media hub is solely responsible for International Women's Day. The day belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. Gloria Steinem, world-renowned feminist, journalist and activist once explained "The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist, nor to any one organization, but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights."  So make International Women's Day your day and do what you can to truly make a positive difference for women.