what international women’s day is really about

march 8 has been used to market everything from diamonds and flowers to spotify playlists and #selfcare products.

by diana duong

mar 8 2022

2 minute read

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what international women’s day is really about

while gifts and flowers are nice for one day, if women return to their homes where they experience domestic abuse, their communities without access to healthcare, or their workplaces with unequal pay, then iwd really has no meaning. getty getty images

international women’s day has come a long way since it was first created in the the early 20th century to fight for women’s rights, particularly the right to vote.

in 1909, the socialist party of america held the first national women’s day as a campaign for suffrage. over the next few years, international versions of the u.s. holiday were held in additional countries, with hundreds of thousands of women of each country attending rallies on varying days. however, over the next few decades, as the suffrage movement became more successful, its popularity started to decline.

international women’s day (iwd) became revitalized with the growth of feminism in the 1960s and once the united nations sponsored the day in 1975 as an occasion to promote women’s issues in rights, particularly in developing countries. since then, iwd has become an official holiday in many countries from africa to central asia and eastern europe to southeast asia, with many women celebrating in the streets. in china, many women are given a half-day off work and spend the afternoon celebrating.

however, like many other holidays, it has become commercialized and often its core message is lost. instead of focusing on the rights and lack of opportunities for women, it’s become a marketing opportunity, a mere hashtag to promote beauty products that supposedly represent female empowerment.

if we want to continue to carry iwd’s message, we must focus on its core principles and the inequalities facing women and anyone who identifies as female. in canada, this means looking at the grander issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, our apathy towards violence against women, and the gender wage gap. globally, we need to tackle issues that disproportionately hurt women by banning practices that still exist, such as female genital mutilation, improving access to sexual, reproductive, and maternal health, and preventing and treating hiv/aids and other sexually transmitted diseases.

“despite progress, societies are still failing women in relation to health, most acutely in poor countries and among the poorest women in all countries. discrimination on the basis of their sex leads to health disadvantages for women. the vision of gender equality in health remains an unfinished agenda,” says dr. marleen temmerman , the director of who’s department of reproductive health and research.

while #girlpower and women’s empowerment are popular rhetoric here, it remains a pipe dream in many countries where women are missing fundamental human rights such as education, independent income, and the right to health. and it seems ingenuous to use marketing to celebrate international women’s day when we have a long road of inequalities to fight before even basic rights are available for every woman.

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what international women’s day is really about

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what international women’s day is really about

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