What would we ever do without the women in our life? Mother, sisters, wives, girlfriends and fiancees…
Nobody can honestly say we don’t owe an enormous amount to the women in our lives, from the mothers who made us chicken soup when we were sick as children, to the sisters who helped us decide what to wear on our first date, to the wives who somehow manage to juggle both a career and a family, never missing a beat.
The International Women’s Day is all about celebrating these incredible people and showing them how much we love, respect and value them. This holiday is perhaps especially important in parts of the world where women are still forced to deal with shocking inequality on a daily basis and is meant to raise awareness of the challenges and struggles faced by these women.
Businessday celebrates women’s history, highlighting their achievements, and aims to further promote and raise awareness of women’s rights and to achieve equal opportunity status in all walks of life.
History of the International Women’s Day
It may come as a surprise that Women’s Day was first celebrated in New York on February 28th, 1909. Two years later, Luise Zietz a German socialist proposed that the holiday become an annually observed one that would celebrate various women’s issues, so as to promote equal rights for women.
The first few Women’s Days were celebrated in a quite different fashion than they are nowadays, with demonstrations in Europe.During these demonstrations, women demanded they finally be given both the right to vote and to hold public office. Employment sex discrimination was also an important issue.
In 1917, the Women’s Day demonstrations in Saint Petersburg, Russia, helped initiate the February Revolution, when women marched through the city demanding an end to the World War I.
Until 1977, Women’s Day was celebrated mainly in socialist countries. It was only after the United Nations General Assembly’s decision to proclaim March 8th International Women’s Day that the holiday gained worldwide popularity.
There are many ways that you can go about celebrating this holiday, but all of them have a similar goal: to raise awareness about the struggles of women the world over and honor their achievements.
Of course, not all achievements are huge, worldwide game-changers like women finally obtaining the right to vote—there are all sorts of other, smaller feats that women you know manage on an everyday basis that you may not pay too much attention to until you try calming 2 crying toddlers, making dinner and explaining the particulars of a newly-acquired client to your boss over the phone at the same time.
Grand gestures aren’t necessarily required to show appreciation, either—sometimes a simple “thank you, I have no idea how you do it” is enough to lift an overworked woman’s spirits.
If you’d like to do something more, though, there is a virtually endless amount of things you can do to celebrate these women in our lives,
Join Businessday as we will releasing a list of 50 Influential Women in Nigeria on the 8th of March 2019.
This year’s International Women’s day is tagged “BalanceForBetter” calling for equal representation of men and women in industries and companies alike.
