International Women's Day

On the 8th of March, people from all around the world will be celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD), a global holiday that commemorates women’s struggle for rights, equality and above all, peace. Ranging from a communist holiday to a UN-sponsored event, IWD has been officially celebrated for almost 90 years. Different countries celebrate with varying degrees of interest; it is still a Russian holiday - celebrated in the fashion of Mother’s Day with flowers or breakfast in bed - in which men show appreciation for the women in their lives.

The origin of IWD is uncertain, but one popular account explains that a fire in a New York factory in 1857, which took the lives of a group of women on strike demanding better working conditions, created the first sparks of public dessent. However, it is not until the 1900s that history begins to uncover concrete evidence of the women’s rights movement.

Early on in the 20th century, communist parties on both sides of the Atlantic appear to have founded Women’s Day almost simultaneously. In 1909, the American Socialist Party suggested that the last day of February would be dedicated to campaigning for women’s right to vote and so Woman’s Day was celebrated around end February / early March. Meanwhile, German socialist Klara Zetkin first proposed a holiday honoring working women in 1907 and on IWD in 1915 she led women from opposing sides of World War I to Switzerland in order to demonstrate for world peace. It was she who, in 1922, actually persuaded Lenin to establish IWD as an official holiday and it became almost exclusively a Communist observance, originally established on the 23rd of February (8th of March in the Western calendar). The resurgence of feminism in the 1960s revived the celebration throughout the world by women of all political affiliations.

The United Nations’ concern for the advancement of women, however, began over 60 years ago and in 1975 the UN drew global attention to women’s concerns by calling for an International Women’s Year and convening the first IWD conference in Mexico City, returning again to the capital in 2003. UN action takes four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; research and training; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups.

Politics are changing around the world and women are slowly beginning to take more powerful decision making positions. Even regions of the world renowned for having macho attitudes towards women are beginning to change. Chilean society is often portrayed as ultra-conservative, dominated by men and the Roman Catholic Church. Only 4% of senators are women and divorce was only legalised last year. All the same, Chile has recently elected a new president, the first female leader that Latin America has ever produced, and if her political ambitions are realised, the world is in for a shake up. Bachelet (pictured), who calls herself a socialist and is a single-parent, says that she wants half her Cabinet to be made up of women, but the moderate voice of the recent winner of ‘Hispanic Woman of the Year 2006,’ Irma Pineyro Arias, told the Oaxaca Times in an interview that although she looks up to Bachelet: “the best way to run a country would be to fill the cabinet with the best people for those positions – this may mean a cabinet solely composed of men, but it could likewise be all women.”

Nelson Mandela might not subscribe to Arias’s point of view. When apartheid fell in 1994, Mandela went about making sure that the South African government proportionally represented the blacks in the country.
The country initially struggled, and people even complained about government officials not being able to understand English, the state language, but Mandela was planning for the future. He knew that if blacks of this generation could get into decision making positions, then blacks of future generations would not need to fight over something as ‘ridiculous’ as equal rights. Bachelet’s thought process is no doubt the same and her judgement will hopefully not be made by men or women, but that age-old sexless judge we have all come to know as time.

Despite the advances in women’s rights since the turn of the 20th century, the glass ceiling is still an all too familiar reality for women around the world. Unfortunately, Women’s Day still has to use itself to draw attention to the inequality suffered by women, but we should look forward to a time when IWD doesn’t carry any political, social or religious connotations, but is celebrated solely to rejoice the beauty of what a woman IS.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Cine Pochote is hosting a programme made entirely by female directors for the entire duration of March (see p13)