Why is International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8?

CAIRO – 8 March 2022: The world celebrates the 8th of March every year as International Women's Day.

The beginning goes back to 1856, when thousands of women went out to protest in the streets of New York against the inhumane conditions under which they were forced to work.

Although the police intervened to disperse the demonstrators, the march succeeded in prompting officials to place the problems of working women on their daily agenda.

On March 8, 1908, thousands of female textile workers demonstrated again in the streets of New York City, but this time they carried pieces of dry bread and bouquets of roses, in a symbolic step. They chose for their protest movement the slogan "Bread and Roses".

This time, the march called for reducing working hours, stopping child labor and giving women the right to vote.

The Bread and Roses demonstrations marked the beginning of an enthusiastic feminist movement within the United States, especially after middle-class women joined the wave of demands for equality and equity. They raised slogans calling for political rights, especially the right to vote.

The celebration of March 8 began as American Women’s Day in commemoration of the demonstrations in New York in 1909. American women contributed to pushing European countries to designate March 8 as Women’s Day.

The proposal of the American delegation was adopted to allocate one day a year to celebrate women at the global level, after the success of the experiment in the United States.

However, the designation of March 8 as the International Women’s Day did not take place until many years after that, because the United Nations did not agree to adopt this occasion until 1977 when the international organization issued a resolution calling on the countries of the world to adopt any day of the year they choose to celebrate women. The majority of countries decided to choose the March 8.

Subsequently, that day turned into a symbol of women's struggle in which women all over the world went out in demonstrations to demand their rights.