Every year on March 8th, International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated as a symbol of the global achievements made by women in social, economic, cultural, and political aspects. It also serves as a reminder of the ongoing fight for women’s rights and gender equality.
Pre-Historic Age to Present
For centuries, societies have treated male patriarchy as natural to the human species. Women are always considered sub-humans in the hands of man’s world. They were the toast of the glamour industry; yet, men referred to them as “the body of pleasure” despite the fact that they were unique and gorgeous in their own way. The world was captivated and intrigued by women, and at times they enraged injustice and exhorted people to change, mend, and lead the world as well. What made friends with them, took use of their most private information, and ingratiated themselves into their life. Women were betrayed for petty reasons in the most unexpected and startling ways imaginable. As she enjoyed all the benefits of her success, the blowback destroyed her relationships and permanently exiled her virtually from society. Yet, none of the males were yet aware of it, the world was already falling apart in the sight of women. It is important for women to support one another, join together for social activism to stop the demise of a democratic society, and keep away from the threat of domestic violence.
Women are the world’s indigenous fighters; they are the root of all civilized men’s social, cultural, and political advancements. The world of male patriarchy is still trying to load them onto slave ships as time passes, to put an end to their planned peace rally to ground-breaking revolts; the world is still trying to pack them into slave ships through the passage of time. To make things worse further, the long exhaustive pages of history have omitted women who fought their enslavers through their unique resistance. And they were erased or intended to be forgotten from history.
Women are constrained by invisible chains and limited choices throughout, from nannies to granddaughters, plagued by the heritage of slavery or social discrimination. The back seat was always where they were kept. This inspired women to dig deeper and made them prepared for a solitary journey or creating groups of organizing groups of uncertain durability, and crumbling correspondences, on the contrary, the ends meet that they find women warriors and social activists everywhere on their way.
War, tyranny, pomposity, extremism, and conditioning shape her consciousness, women rebels who fought for freedom, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts under colonial rule, are all explored by ground-breaking examination of gendered oppression, its origins, its histories, and her persistent efforts to combat it. But how would that affect our perception of gender inequality? How would our contentious present and imagined history differ if we didn’t presume that men have always had the upper hand over women? What if we perceived inequality as something more perishable that required ongoing remaking and reassertion?
It is quite difficult to unravel the complicated history of male dominance, including how it originally crept into communities and spread over the world from prehistory to the present. The following can be seen throughout history, from the earliest known human settlements to the most recent scientific and technological advancements:
There are indications that a few prominent males were procreating more than other men starting around 7,000 years ago. Gendered codes started to emerge in portions of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East some 5,000 years ago as the earliest nations started to grow, but they did so slowly and piecemeal and were always contested. Marriage traditions became influenced by the pervasive practice of taking captives and slavery in countries where women abandoned their own families to live with their partners, eventually forming rules that excluded women from support structures and denied them equal rights.
Over thousands of years, there was a great deal of variance in gender and power in many societies, but war, colonization and imperialistic empires drastically altered lifestyles all over the world introducing strongly patriarchal traditions and damaging how people structured their homes and labor. They are always against women.
In an effort to comprehend the causes of inequality, philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and feminists vigorously questioned what male patriarchy constituted in the 19th and 20th centuries. Notwithstanding the resistance to sexism, abuse, and discrimination in our day and age, even revolutionary attempts to bring about equality have frequently met with failure and retaliation. The hope is that it exposed the diversity of human arrangements, which undermines the traditional grand narratives and reveals male superiority as an ever-evolving component of control systems.
For example, female collegiate athletes frequently suffer from injuries, sexual harassment, eating disorders, or mental health issues as they attempt to overcome a natural decline in performance compared to men of their age. Women also drop out of sports at alarming rates as they reach adolescence. Women everywhere are awakening to the fact that they are competing, playing, and running in a world that wasn’t made for them; the days when women and girls felt fortunate to participate are long gone. Women everywhere are sharing a raw personal narrative of growth and change as well as a crucial call to reimagine their place in the world. The time has come to reconstruct our systems with women at their center, not just for show but with heart and verve. This gives voice to the often-silent experience of the feminine force. The women are determined to defend themselves and their girls from harm now that they know they were drugged and attacked by a group of men from their community.
Women, who are mostly still kept either illiterate or apolitical, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to become the voice of their culture or country they live in, are not more a moment they should stay in the only world they’ve ever known; either run away from chauvinist in fear or raise enough cash to pay the rapists’ bail and bring them home.
What Is International Women’s Day?
A felicitation of a social movement or political movement? It was the combination of great social upheaval and political activism
International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on the 8th of March every year as a symbol of the social, economic, cultural, and political global achievements of women. It also stands as a reminiscence of the ongoing struggle for gender equality and women’s rights.
It was the year 1908 when women from US and Europe started organizing themselves to demand basic civil rights, better working conditions, equality in wages, adult suffrage, stopping women’s child labor, the right to vote, and other rights. The following year, the US Socialist Party decided to commemorate a garment worker’s strike in New York City as a national event and declared the first National Women’s Day on February 28.
This embarked the first National Women’s Day to be observed in the US on February 28, 1909. Inspired by the success of the American movement, women in Europe began to organize and demand their rights as well. In 1910, a woman named Clara Zetkin proposed the idea of an International Women’s Day at a meeting of the Socialist International Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The proposal was accepted unanimously, and the first International Women’s Day was celebrated the following year on March 19 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland.
During the First World War, International Women’s Day became a focal point for protests against the war and for women’s rights. Women in Russia celebrated the day on the last Sunday of February 1917, which later became known as the February Revolution, leading to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime. Soviet Russia was the first country to declare March 8th as a national holiday in 1918.
Over time, International Women’s Day has grown into a global movement, with millions of people around the world coming together to celebrate women’s achievements and advocate for gender equality.
Why IWD is important?
The theme for International Women’s Day varies from year to year and is chosen by the United Nations. The theme for 2022 was “Women’s Leadership for an Equal Future: Build Back Better,” highlighting the need for women’s leadership and participation in all areas of society.
Thus, IWD is considered to be a global phenomenon, with millions of people around the world participating in rallies, marches, and events to celebrate women’s achievements and advocate for gender equality. An opportunity to raise awareness about issues such as unequal pay, domestic violence, reproductive rights, sharing of property, and many other forms of discrimination and oppression faced by women.
In recent years, the #MeToo and Time Up movements have drawn attention to the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault, further highlighting the importance of IWD and the ongoing fight for gender equality.
- To celebrate women’s achievements: IWD prerogatively tends to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of women to society, from politics to arts, sciences, and business. It is a day to honor the trailblazers who have broken barriers and shattered fragile ceilings of society kept under feminine oppression, paving the way for future generations of women.
- To raise consciousness about gender inequality: IWD is an occasion to highlight the persistent challenges faced by women globally, including unequal pay, limited access to education, healthcare, and political representation, and all kind of violence against women.
- To advocate for women’s rights: IWD is a platform to demand change and call for action on issues that affect women, such as reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and discrimination in the workplace.
- To promote gender equality: IWD promotes the idea of gender equality and encourages people of all genders to work together towards achieving it. Gender equality benefits not only women but also society as a whole, leading to more inclusive, diverse, and prosperous communities.
- To inspire future generations: IWD inspires young girls and women to pursue their dreams and ambitions, knowing that they too can achieve great things and make a positive impact on the world.
IWD symbolizes the contributions of women to society, celebrates their achievements, and reminds us of the work that still needs to be done to achieve gender equality and ensure that all women are treated with dignity and respect.