International Women's Day on March 8 is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world, commemorated at the UN and designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents come together to celebrate their day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle.
International Women's Day is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage. The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century.
Chronology
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the US on February 28. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month until 1913.
1910
The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by more than 100 women from 17 countries.
1911
As a result of the decision at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (March 19) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
1913-1914
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War One, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913.
1917
With two million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace."
Four days later, the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional government granted women the right to vote. Since those early years, the growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global UN women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process.
The UN's Role
Few causes promoted by the UN have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
Over the years, action on the part of the UN for the advancement of women has been defined by four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups.
Today, a central organizing principle of the work of the UN is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.

Courtesy of the United Nations Department of Public Information, Development Section, mediainfo@un.org www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/women/womday97.htm www.un.org/events/women/iwd/2006