Gelsey Hughes
ED 2, Kamonyi District, Southern Province
This year I celebrated International Women’s Day by grading
papers. Despite it being an official
holiday in Rwanda, it felt like any other day.
Most of the women I knew went about their usual business, pausing only
for a few hours in the evening to honor the occasion with a Fanta. Like World Earth Day, women’s day felt like a call to action
that required no response.
When one of my male coworkers joked that
there ought to be an international day for men too, I found myself wondering,
what for? So men can have a special day
to convene in town and drink Fanta? It
occurred to me that I had no idea what we were meant to be celebrating.
I decided to do some research.
International Women’s Day is both a day
for celebrating the accomplishments of women worldwide and a day for promoting
gender equality and human rights. It
originated as a national holiday in the United States at the turn of the
twentieth century, when a growing labor movement and an increasing number of
female wage earners lead to more and more political mobilization on the part of
women. An abridged timeline:
1909: The Socialist
Party of America proposes a national holiday honoring women workers the wake of
a garment workers’ strike in NYC.
1910: In Copenhagen,
Socialist International establishes an International Women’s Day for promoting
equal rights for women, especially women’s suffrage.
1911: International
Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated in Denmark, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
1914: IWD is
officially recognized in the USSR.
Around the world, IWD is marked by antiwar protests and political
rallies.
1977: The UN adopts
a resolution proclaiming March 8th as an international day for
women’s rights. IWD is officially
recognized as an international holiday.
Today, IWD is celebrated most prominently
in developing countries. In some places, IWD is a day for honoring the women in our
lives whom we love. In other places, it
is a day for reflecting on the unique struggles of women. In my village IWD is a day for taking a
Fanta, but that counts as a small upheaval.
It might not sound like much, but around here women don’t go out for
Fanta on any other day.
Sources:
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