07/03/2026
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 8 March: International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on 8 March, commemorating women's fight for equality and liberation along with the women's rights movement and has been celebrated for over a hundred years. International Women's Day gives focus to issues such as gender quality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women. It originated at the time as the universal female suffrage movement in Europe and North America during the early 20th century.
On the 19 March 1911, the first International Women's Day was marked by over a million people in Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Across Europe, women demanded the right to vote and to hold public office and protested against employment s*x discrimination.
Whilst New Zealand was the first self-governing country in the world to allow all women to vote in 1893, the United States legally guaranteed American women the right to vote in 1920, and Great Britain granted full voting rights for women in 1928. Most countries granted women the right to vote between 1893 and 1960, that included all but six European nations. Some of the European nations that allowed universal suffrage after 1960 include Andorra (1970), Switzerland (1971), Portugal (1976), Liechtenstein (1984). Some might consider these countries to be backward, personally I prefer to consider that they were not forward thinking and slow to progress in this matter.
