International Women's Day

Hello ^_^
Well... Do you see google doodle today?
Yep.... today is International Women's Day....
Shout for woman!!!



Well.... this is some article about today

International Women's Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements. Started as a Socialist political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries, primarily Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet bloc. In many regions, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day. In other regions, however, the original political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February (by Julian calendar then used in Russia). In 1917 demonstrations marking International Women's Day in St.Petersburg on the last Sunday in February (which fell on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar) initiated the February Revolution. The first national Women's Day was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. In August 1910, an International Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second Internationalin Copenhagen. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annual 'International Woman's Day' (singular) and was seconded by Clara Zetkin, although no date was specified at that conference. Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights, including suffrage, for women. The following year, on 18 March, 1911, IWD was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations. In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honouring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Women demanded that women be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination. Americans continued to celebrate National Women's Day on the last Sunday in February.

Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, and it was established, but was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965 by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day was declared a non working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But still, women's day must be celebrated as are other holidays."

From its official adoption in Russia following the Soviet Revolution in 1917 the holiday was predominantly celebrated in communist and socialist countries. It was celebrated by the communists in China from 1922, and by Spanish communists from 1936. After the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949 the state council proclaimed on December 23 that March 8 would be made an official holiday with women in China given a half-day off.

In the West, International Women's Day was first observed as a popular event after 1977 when the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for Women's Rights and International Peace.

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International Women’s Day (IWD) is traditionally celebrated on March 8^th, with global organisations ranging from the UN and European Parliament to Google and the African Development Bank eager to lend their support. Yet its meaning today bears little resemblance to its internationalist origins. Forgotten heroine Sylvia Pankhurst exemplifies the original spirit of the day. In 1911 German socialist Clara Zetkin organised the first International Women’s Day as a day of international solidarity to fight for common objectives. In Europe alone, more than a million women and men attended rallies demanding women’s equality, the right to work, vote and hold public office: the right for women and working men to enter fully into public life. The disenfranchised, the vast majority in industrialised nations, demanded change and unrest regularly boiled over in the turbulent 1900s.

In Britain, the suffragette movement intensified its campaign for female enfranchisement and in 1906 petitions to parliament were replaced by direct action to try and force the government to support suffrage legislation. Women stormed parliament, smashed windows and damaged the property of the rich, resisted police arrest, organised bombings and arson attacks, and underwent imprisonment. The Pankhurst family led the way and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst are today memorialized with statues outside parliament for their contribution to the fight for female suffrage.  But it is Emmeline’s lesser-known daughter Sylvia Pankhurst who proved to be the real thorn in the establishment’s side and whose fight for women’s equality remains exemplary, even today.

Like her counterpart Clara Zetkin, but unlike her mother and sister, for Sylvia the problem of women’s inequality was not the result of prejudices inside the minds of men, but a structural problem. Capitalism benefited from women’s second class position in the home, maintaining the family for free and as lesser paid workers in the sweated trades. The fight for women’s equality and democratic rights required a challenge to the system and working class women and men had every interest in taking it on. Emmeline and Christabel, meanwhile, wanted the vote for upper class women, not women of the great unwashed or the 42 per cent of working class men denied the vote. They expelled Sylvia from their elite campaign for her political convictions.

Unrepentant, Sylvia established the East London Federation of Suffragettes alongside the newspaper Women’s Dreadnought to mobilise the East End working class behind a movement for universal suffrage the political elite could not ignore. This was no plea for a ‘ladies vote’ but a threat to the establishment itself. As Britain geared up for war, her mother and sister dropped the fight for the vote altogether to support the war effort. Sylvia meanwhile opposed the war, supported freedom fighters in Ireland, sided with the young Bolsheviks in Russia and like Zetkin popularised internationalism as the way forward.

Today’s calls for state protection of women, for positive discrimination laws, for ‘gendered’ development and more, assumes women are vulnerable victims in need of help. The women behind International Women’s Day were not looking for pity or favors and were prepared to take the state on to win equality for all. International solidarity required a strident self interest that united people in common cause beyond national boundaries against their nation states. This is an outlook worth revisiting for this year’s International Women’s Day.

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Well... after all....
Even i always said that i'm Hermaphrodite, i'm still woman, a little girl, an ordinary girl...
Freedom for woman!!!!
Yaaaayyyyy!!!!!!