WOMEN’S DAY. International Women’s Day is a day of awareness and mobilization on equality between men and women.
[Mis à jour le 8 mars 2024 à 08h44] International Women’s Rights Day falls this Friday, March 8, 2024. This 2024 edition will obviously be marked in France by abortion and the fight for the right of women to terminate a pregnancy, a few days after the adoption of the registration of abortion in the Constitution. More than 160 events are also to be organized in France, including one in Paris with departure scheduled for 2 p.m. from Place Gambetta and towards Place de la Bastille. Processions are also planned in Marseille, Lille, Rennes, Nantes or Bordeaux.
In Paris, the day will also be marked by two events including the presentation of the Simone Veil 2024 prize. This “prize of the French Republic for equality between women and men” will be presented by Stéphane Séjourné, Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs. Then the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron must speak at Place Vendôme during a ceremony to seal the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution. A tribute to ten women “who contributed through their fight to constitutional law” is planned according to the Elysée.
Since the creation of this day in 1977 by the UN, a theme has been determined each year by the organization. This year, this theme is summarized by the formula “Investing in women: accelerating the pace”. The United Nations aims in particular to improve the economic independence of women through five points: resources, employment, time, security and rights.
The choice of March 8 as the date dedicated to women’s rights comes to us from communist Russia. In 1921, Lenin already initiated March 8 as “International Women’s Day”, in memory of the first demonstration to have launched the Russian Revolutionin 1917. That year, Russian workers decided to go on strike on the last Sunday of February to demand “bread and peace”. It was February 23, but in the Julian calendar… The date will become March 8 in our Gregorian calendar. It was not until 1977, in the middle of a sequence of détente between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold Warfor the United Nations to adopt this day on the calendar after hesitating between several dates, such as March 19, a memory of the first parades in the United States in 1911.
If the United Nations formalized this celebration (and its date) in 1977 and it was established in France in 1982 by President François Mitterrand, the origin of Women’s Day, which became “Women’s Rights Day” , is to be looked further back in time: at the time of the struggle of workers for better working conditions, and that of the suffragettes for the right to vote, that is to say in the first part of the 20th century. In 1957, the newspaper l’Humanité saluted the centenary of March 8, 1857, the day when “the clothing workers of the city of New York went to parade in the streets, like men, carrying signs and banners “for better working conditions and respect for their dignity. In 1908, on June 21 this time, it was the turn of 250,000 suffragettes to demand women’s right to vote in London. A late 19th – early 20th century with a taste for emancipation which would encourage the emergence of International Women’s Day, decades later. The first International Women’s Day took place on March 19, 1911 (in Europe and the United States) and already advocated for more rights.
After the signing of the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945 to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental right, demonstrations multiplied once a year around the world for equality between men and women. These days are also an opportunity to take stock, particularly in figures, of the current situation. Activist associations also take the opportunity to celebrate recent achievements and to voice the demands that remain on the agenda.