Collectively, we can Accelerate Action for women worldwide. Step forward in solidarity for International Women's Day (IWD) 2025 and help #AccelerateAction to speed up women's equality. At the current rate of progress, it will take 134 years to reach full gender parity in 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, according to data from the World Economic Forum. So, together, let's Accelerate Action to speed up the rate of progress.
One of the best ways to forge women's equality is to understand what works and to do more of this, faster. As such, the IWD 2025 campaign theme 'Accelerate Action' is a worldwide call to acknowledge the strategies, resources and activity that positively impact women's advancement, and to support and elevate their implementation. Significant barriers to women's equality remain, yet with the right action and support, positive progress can be made for women everywhere. Continue reading from International Women's Day Official
Historical Timeline of International Women's Day (IWD Official)
A Brief History of International Women's Day (ThoughtCo)
Why International Women's Day Is Celebrated on March 8 (Good Housekeeping)
The Little-Known Radical History of International Women’s Day (Vox)
The History Behind International Women’s Day (Penn Today)
International Women's Day (Encyclopedia Britannica)
International Women's Day (IWD) 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, IWD is one of the most important days of the year to:
Everyone, everywhere can play a part in helping forge gender equality. From a wide range of IWD campaigns, events, rallies, lobbying and performances - to festivals, parties, fun runs and celebrations - all IWD activity is valid. That's what makes IWD inclusive. Continue reading from IWD Official
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
