International Women's Day Quotes (0-)

“Russian women began celebrating IWD in 1913... After the Russian Revolution, the day was declared a holiday in the Soviet Union. From there, it was primarily celebrated in communist countries such as China. On the heels of the U.S. civil rights movement.. and as leaders such as Gloria Steinem fought sex discrimination in the 1960s and ’70s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women’s Year. In 1977 the U.N. officially marked IWD by inviting member countries to celebrate women’s rights and world peace on March 8. Today, IWD has corporate sponsors... But as the website points out, millennial women have lived in a time in which there are so many advances for women that they may think the battles fought by their second-wave feminist sisters have already been won. “The unfortunate fact,” it reads, “is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.””

“Rights groups worldwide celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD)...as they commemorate women’s achievements and call for equality. But for an event championed by international nongovernmental organizations and major global corporations, it may surprise some that IWD was born out of the U.S. socialist movement in the early 20th century. In 1909 the Socialist Party of America organized a New York City march commemorating a garment workers’ strike the previous year. The party called it National Women’s Day, and women organized by the group demonstrated for better pay and working conditions as well as the right to vote... The Socialist Party continued to hold Women’s Day celebrations on the last Sunday of February for the next few years, and newspapers from the era mentioned International Women’s Day on Feb. 27, 1910 — when thousands of women organized by the socialist movement gathered at Carnegie Hall... European women, meanwhile, were championing similar ideals... IWD, consequently, was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911. Women in these countries demanded the right to vote, to hold public office and the right to work...”

“On March 6, 1979, Khomeini declared that women working in government offices must wear the veil; “naked women” could not work in Islamic ministries. Two days later, for International Women’s Day, tens of thousands of women spontaneously came out and marched on the streets of Tehran chanting “In the dawn of freedom, there is an absence of freedom.” Some women were bareheaded, others veiled, including some in full chador, the all-enveloping black cloak that was worn only by the most pious and conservative. There were men, too, including some who formed a protective cordon around the women as they came under attack. Feminists from around the world flocked to the protests, including the American activist Kate Millett, the author of Sexual Politics. Soon as many as a hundred thousand women were on the streets. For six days, they protested the assault on their personal freedom. Rarely—if ever—had women organized so quickly and spontaneously after a revolution. But Iranian women in Iran had gained many rights under the shah, including the right to vote, to run for office (in 1963), and to wear whatever they wanted. In an effort at modernization, the shah’s father (the first Pahlavi to rule) had briefly tried to ban the veil altogether in 1935, but that forced conservative families to keep their daughters at home for modesty. The move was quickly reversed. What Iranian women wanted was the choice: to veil or not to veil.”