International Women's Day History , Theme & Significance

 International Women's Day History , Theme & Significance

International Women's Day has been celebrated around the world for more than 100 years. This special day is celebrated every year on 8 March. It has a theme of "celebrating the past, planning the future".

What is International Women's Day and when does it happen?

International Women's Day on 8 March every year is a global celebration of women and their achievements. It is also a day to highlight campaigns focused on raising awareness of issues affecting women around the world, improving women's lives, and increasing gender equality (equality between men and women). Since 1996, International Women's Day is being celebrated as a theme every year. The first of these was about "celebrating the past, planning the future". Whereas the theme of International Women's Day 2021 is "Choose To Challenge". The idea behind choosing this theme this year is that "a challenging world is a cautious world and a challenge brings change".

History Behind International Women's Day

The history of Women's Day is quite old. This day was first started in the year 1909. At that time, the day was first celebrated on 28 February 1909, at the call of the Socialist Party in America. It then began to be celebrated on the last Sunday of February. Its main aim at that time was to get women the right to vote, because at that time in most countries women did not have the right to vote. Then in 1917, the women of Russia decided to go on strike for bread and clothes on Women's Day. This strike had the effect that the Tsar had to relinquish power and the interim government gave women the right to vote. It was truly a great achievement for women. Now you must be wondering how the date of Women's Day, celebrated on the last day of February, became 8 March. It also has an interesting story. Actually, at that time the Julian calendar used to run in Russia and the Gregorian calendar in the rest of the world. There is some difference between these two dates. According to the Julian calendar, the last Sunday of February of 1917 was on 23 February, according to the Gregorian calendar, that day was 8 March. Later, due to the untiring efforts of the famous German activist Clara Zetkin, the International Socialist Congress accepted the international form of Women's Day in 1910 and declared the day a public holiday. The date of Women's Day was finally changed to 8 March in 1921. Since then Women's Day is celebrated all over the world on 8 March only.

This year Women's Day will be celebrated like this-

This year, Women's Day will be celebrated like every year. This time too, a theme has been chosen to celebrate Women's Day -”Choose To Challenge”. The purpose behind this theme is that a challenging world is an alert world and the challenge itself changes, so let's choose to challenge everyone. We can all choose to challenge gender bias and inequality. Can opt for awareness against prejudices. We can choose to explore and celebrate the achievements of all women. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

#HappyInternationalWomen'sDay2021