International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8 every year to recognize women’s achievements worldwide and acknowledge the continuing lack in inequality – social, political and economic – between the sexes, while calling for full gender equality. The 2016 United Nations theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.” The idea was chosen to accelerate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders at a 2015 United Nations summit, focusing on how to reduce poverty, disease, hunger and gender inequality. How did it begin? Although it is difficult to pinpoint precisely when International Women’s Day began, its origins can be traced to 1908 when thousands of women garment workers went on strike in New York and marched through the city demanding the right to vote, higher wages and better working conditions. The following year, the Socialist Party of America organized the first National Women’s Day, which commemorated the garment workers’ strike the previous year. In 1910, the International Women’s Day was officially established at the socialist congress, the Second International, in Copenhagen. The proposal to institute an official commemoration that…
