International Womens Day PNG

About International Women's Day

International Women's Day or International Working Women's Day is an international day celebrated by the United Nations every year on 8 March. It is devoted to the development of political and social awareness of women on the basis of human rights, and the celebration of their economic, political and social achievements.

On March 8, 1857, 40,000 weaving workers went on strike in a textile factory in New York City, USA, demanding better working conditions. However, as a result of the police attacking the workers and the workers being locked in the factory, and the fire that followed, as a result of the workers unable to escape from the barricades set up in front of the factory, 129 female workers died. More than 10,000 people attended the workers' funeral.

Clara Zetkin, one of the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party, at the 2nd International Women's Conference (International Socialist Women's Conference) in Copenhagen, Denmark on 26 - 27 August 1910, in memory of the women workers who died in the textile factory fire on March 8, 1857, "Internationaler Frauentag" (International Women's Day), and the proposal was unanimously accepted.

In the early years, no specific date was set, but it was always commemorated in the spring. The date was determined as March 8 at the 3rd International Women's Conference (3rd International Meeting of Communist Parties) held in Moscow in 1921. Its name was determined as "International Working Women's Day". International Women's Day, which was banned from being commemorated in some countries between the First and Second World War, came to the fore more strongly when it was started to be commemorated in the United States at the end of the 1960s. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the commemoration of 8 March as "International Women's Day" on 16 December 1977.