Be bold for change in the fight for equality
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY HAS NOW BEEN OBSERVED SINCE 1900
TODAY marks International Women’s Day.
People across the globe will come together to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women through the ages.
The day also marks a call to action to tackle the gender divide, which still blights Western society.
International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900s. This year’s theme is ‘Be Bold For Change.’ Organisers are calling on women to ‘help forge a better working world,’ and continue to fight for gender equality.
This year, the group behind the anti-Trump Women’s March has also encouraged every female around the world to take the day off today in honour of International Women’s Day.
Women have been asked to not spend a single penny, except at businesses owned by women or minorities.
The idea is that it will demonstrate the enormous contribution women makes to the world – and what would happen if women went on ‘strike.’
Women who can’t take the day off are asked to show their support by wearing red. The Women’s March group is joining the already well-established annual International Women’s Strike, after seeing a huge success with its anti-Trump protests in January.
The movement, planned and organised by women in more than 30 different countries, was inspired by a strike brought by Icelandic women in 1975.
It then grew over the decades and spread across the globe.
Most Mancunians will already know how much one of the city’s own did for women in Britain.
The Women’s Rights movement owes a lot to Moss Side-born Emmeline Pankhurst.
In 1889, she founded the Women’s Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections.
When she died in 1928, women in the UK had been granted equal voting rights just weeks earlier by the Conservative government.
A statue of Pankhurst will be unveiled in St Peter’s Square in Manchester city centre on International Women’s Day in 2019.