Women’s day

International Woman’s Rights Day, also known as Women’s Day, occurs on March 8 every year to commemorate both the social, economic and political achievements, as well as the discrimination and violence that women have been and still are subjected to in every part of the world. It is associated with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women established on December 17, 1999 . This celebration has been held in the United States of America since 1909, in some European countries since 1911 and in Italy since 1922. The VII Congress of the Second Socialist International was held in Stuttgart from 18 to 24 August 1907 and 884 delegates from 25 nations were there. Among these were the most important Marxist personalities of the time such as the Germans Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and August Bebel, the Russians Lenin and Martov, the French Jean Jaurès. The Socialist parties introduced the universal suffrage for women and from 26 to 27 August, an International Conference of Socialist Women was held, in presence of 58 delegates from 13 countries.it was decided to create a Socialist Women’s Information Office: Clara Zetkin was elected secretary and the magazine she edited, Die Gleichheit (Equality), became the organ of the International of Socialist Women. In the United States, the first and official Women’s Day was celebrated on February 23, 1909. Towards the end of the year, on November 22, a great strike of twenty thousand shirt makers began in New York, which lasted until February 15, 1910. While in the United States it continued to be held on the last Sunday of February, in some European countries – Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark – Women’s Day was held for the first time on Sunday 19 March 1911. In France the demonstration was held on 18 March 1911, In Sweden it took place on May 1, 1911, coinciding with the demonstrations for Labor Day

In Russia it was held for the first time in St. Petersburg only in 1913, on March 3, on the initiative of the Bolshevik Party, with a demonstration on the Kalashaikovsky Stock Exchange interrupted by the police who made numerous arrests; the following year the organizers were arrested, effectively preventing the organization of the event. In Germany, after the celebration of 1911, it was repeated for the first time on Sunday 8 March 1914, the day of the beginning of a “red week” of unrest proclaimed by the German socialists. The celebrations were interrupted in all the countries in the years following the beginning of the First World War. In Italy, International Women’s Day was celebrated for the first time only on March 12, 1922, on the initiative of the Communist Party of Italy. After World War II, the date of 8 March was associated with the death of hundreds of workers in the burning of a shirt factory in 1908 in New York, On December 16, 1977, the United Nations General Assembly proposed to each country, respecting historical traditions and local customs, to declare one day a year “United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace”.