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International Women's Day: About

International Women's Day

Link to That's What She Said by Joanne Lipman in the Catalog
Link to Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio in the Catalog
Link to Believing: Our Twenty-Year Journey To End Gender Violence by Anita Hill in the Catalog
Link to No More Nice Girls by Lauren McKeon in the Catalog
Link to Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious by Lucinda Jackson in the Catalog
Link to Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde in the Catalog
Link to The Seven Necessary Sins For Women And Girls by Mona Eltahawy in the Catalog
Link to The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates in the Catalog
Link to Outspoken: Why Women's Voices Get Silenced and How to Set Them Free by Veronica Rueckert in the Catalog
Link to Break the Good Girl Myth by Majo Molfino in the Catalog
Link to Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen in the Catalog
Link to Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers by Sady Doyle in the Catalog
Link to We Are Feminists: An Infographic History of the Women's Rights Movement by Helen Pankhurst in the Catalog
Link to Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez in the Catalog
Link to Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home by Anita Hill in the Catalog
Link to Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper in the Catalog
Link to We The Women by Julie C. Suk in the Catalog
Link to The Guilty Feminist: You Don't Have To Be Perfect To Overthrow The Patriarchy by Deborah Frances-White in the Catalog
Link to A Century of Votes For Women by Christina Wolbrecht & Kevin Corder in the Catalog
Link to Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America by Julie DiCaro in the Catalog
Link to Women's Liberation! edited by Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore in the Catalog
Link to Betraying Big Brother by Leta Hong Fincher in the Catalog
Link to The Genius of Women by Janice Kaplan in the Catalog
Link to The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! by Gloria Steinem in the Catalog
Link to Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change The World by Jessica Valenti in the Catalog
Link to I Hate Men by Pauline Harmange in the Catalog
Link to Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women's Rights by Rachel Vogelstein & Meighan Stone in the Catalog
Link to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in the Catalog
Link to Era of Ignition by Amber Tamblyn in the Catalog
Link to They Didn't See Us Coming by Lisa Levenstein in the Catalog
Link to Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today by Rachel Verona Cote in the Catalog
Link to Period. End of Sentence by Anita Diamant in the Catalog
Link to Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall in the Catalog
Link to Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser in the Catalog
Link to She Said by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey in the Catalog
Link to Our Revolution by Honor Moore in the Catalog
Link to Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works by Jay Newton-Small in the Catalog
Link to Hysterical: Why We Need to Talk About Women, Hormones, and Mental Health by Eleanor Morgan in the Catalog

The theme of IWD 2023 is #EmbraceEquity...but why embrace Equity versus Equality? What's the difference?

The words equity and equality are often used interchangeably.  Etymologically, the root word they share is aequus, meaning “even” or “fair” or “equal” - which led to equity being from the Latin aequitas, and equality from aequalitas. Yet, despite these similarities, equity and equality are inherently different concepts, and the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme seeks to help forge worldwide conversation about this important issue and its impact.  

So, what's the difference between 'equity' and 'equality' - and why is it important to understand, acknowledge and value this? The IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme seeks to get the world talking about why "equal opportunities are no longer enough" - and can in fact be exclusionary, rather than inclusive. Continue reading from International Women's Day Official

About International Women's Day: March 8th

International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality. 

Marked annually on March 8th, International Women's Day (IWD) is one of the most important days of the year to:

  • celebrate women's achievements
  • raise awareness about women's equality
  • lobby for accelerated gender parity
  • fundraise for female-focused charities

The purpose of the International Women's Day website is to support the supporters, and in doing so it provides a platform to help forge positive change for women. Whether hosting an event, running a campaign, launching an initiative, reporting on achievement, donating to a female-focused charity, or more - there are many ways groups and individuals can mark International Women's Day. Continue reading from IWD Official

The Surprising History of International Women’s Day

Controversy clouds the history of International Women’s Day. According to a common version of the holiday’s origins, it was established in 1907, to mark the 50th anniversary of a brutally repressed protest by New York City’s female garment and textile workers. But there’s a problem with that story: Neither the 1857 protest nor the 50th anniversary tribute may have actually taken place. In fact, research that emerged in the 1980s suggested that origin myth was invented in the 1950s, as part of a Cold War-era effort to separate International Women’s Day from its socialist roots.

The historian Temma Kaplan revisited the first official National Woman’s Day, held in New York City on February 28, 1909. (The organizers, members of the Socialist Party of America, wanted it to be on a Sunday so that working women could participate.) Thousands of people showed up to various events uniting the suffragist and socialist causes, whose goals had often been at odds. Labor organizer Leonora O’Reilly and others addressed the crowd at the main meeting in the Murray Hill Lyceum, at 34th Street and Third Avenue. In Brooklyn, writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wall-paper” fame) told the congregation of the Parkside Church: “It is true that a woman’s duty is centered in her home and motherhood…[but] home should mean the whole country, and not be confined to three or four rooms or a city or a state.”

The concept of a “woman’s day” caught on in Europe. On March 19, 1911 (the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a radical socialist government that briefly ruled France in 1871), the first International Woman’s Day was held, drawing more than 1 million people to rallies worldwide. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most attempts at social reform ground to a halt, but women continued to march and demonstrate on International Woman’s Day. Continue reading from History Channel

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