International Women's Day emerged from the labor movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in North America and Europe. During the galloping industrialization, workers often protested about working conditions. One of the first protests by workers against poor working conditions and low wages was organized on March 8, 1857 in New York. The police broke up the demonstration and dispersed the disenfranchised textile workers, who then organized themselves into a union. Protests for workers' rights continued Protests continued until the end of the 19th century, and on March 8. In 1908, more than 15,000 women marched through New York demanding shorter working hours, better wages, and the right to vote. It was precisely because of this protest that the following year, on February 28, the first International Women's Day was celebrated in New York. In 1910, at the first International Conference of Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, International Women's Day was established as a day of struggle for women's equality. Over a million people marked Women's Day in 1911, demanding women's suffrage and the right to political action, protesting discrimination against female workers.
Women have meanwhile won the right to vote, the right to work and education, the right to choose how they will live and whom they will love, but the path to complete social equality is still long and thorny. March 8 is not a day to praise women for being beautiful and gentle beings, to shower them with gifts and to encourage consumerism, but a day when we remember that women's human rights were won through a hard and bloody struggle over decades. Today, women are once again forced to fight for long-won rights, such as the right to legal and accessible abortion. We are once again put in a position where we must advocate for documents and conventions in order to be protected from violence. We reiterate that sexism and misogyny are not humor, and the deconstruction of gender roles and stereotypes is necessary throughout the entire education system. After a century-long struggle for workers' rights, women in the 21st century have been underpaid, exploited, and segregated into so-called women's sectors. Unpaid domestic and care work is still performed by women in the largest percentage. This is precisely why International Women's Day signifies the continuous struggle, the anger of women around the world and the desire for social change. The eighth of March is celebrated on the street, and the demands of March 8 must reverberate through all spheres of life every day.
BaBe, as an organization that promotes and protects women's human rights, and which through its activities strives to ensure gender equality in all spheres of life, reminds us that International Women's Day is a day of celebration, but also of resistance and struggle for all those disenfranchised, marginalized and vulnerable social groups. The battle for a better world has neither gender nor sex, which is why men must join women in efforts to make this society more equal and just.
