Womens Day 2010: International Womens Day, IWD 100th Anniversary

by Sudha Krishna | March 5, 2010 at 12:43 pm

2529 views | 1 Recommendation | 0 comments

International Women's Day 2010 - IWD 100th Anniversary, March 8th

International Women's Day will reach a milestone in 2010 as it marks its 100th anniversary. For 100 years International Women's Day celebrates the political, economic, cultural and social achievement of women around the world. Not only is IWD a celebration it also serves as reminder of the continuing struggle for equality that so many women face across the world.

International Women's Day - Background and History

Women's Day or IWD was first promulgated in 1910 in Copenhagen at the International Conference of Working Women by a leading German socialist named Clara Zetkin.

The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.

Since those early days and those early struggles for the equality of women the day that came to symbolize the equality movement gained in importance, scope and size. Equality and womens groups around the world made International Women's Day their won - reflecting their unique accomplishments and struggles whether it was in India, Iran or America. A number of countries have made International Women's Day a national holiday.

[q url=""]

On this day it is customary for men to give the women in their lives - mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, colleagues, etc - flowers and small gifts. In some countries (such as Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother's Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers

In Italy, to celebrate the day, men give yellow mimosas to women.[20][21] Yellow mimosas and chocolate are also one of the most common March 8 presents in Russia and Albania.

In India, IWD holds a lot of significance. Many celebrations are held during the day.

[/q]

And though the struggle for the equality of women has progressed tremendously much remains to be done. The United Nations has a sobering statistic to think about this International Women's Day. According the UN Development Fund for Women it is women who perform 66 per cent of work globally, women produce a full half of food globally, but earn 10 per cent of men and own 1 per cent of global property.

In the video the World Food Program has some alarming and compelling statistics about the contribution Women make to the global economy.