Most of people knows that March 8th is International Women’s Day, right? But what really happened in that day? Why do we still have to celebrate and remind this event? The story behind this is long and empowered.
From mid 1850’s, women’s around the world, mostly in Europe and United States, started to protest for equal rights. From there, some important events happened, like in 8th of march of 1857, when women’s from a textile industry went to strike requiring better conditions at work, the right to vote for the elections and the end of the child labor.
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At the same day, in 1908, women honored that day by protesting in New York against the same causes. Both times, the protest was scolded by the police. The big tragedy happened in 25th of march in 1911. More than 140 workers, mostly children and women, died on a fire due to the bad work conditions that they were submitted in a industry based in New York.
The date of 8th of march was official declared International Women’s Day in 1910, in Denmark, to honor the protests and the victims from the fire. ONU (United Nation Organization) recognized the date only in 1975. Since then, 8th of March is celebrated all over the world because of the achievements of women that had already been conquered and to press increasingly for the full equality of genres.
Beyond all the story behind this important day, there is the main objective: fight for political, social and economic equality between women and men. Unfortunately, nowadays, we haven’t reached that goal yet. Due to all this history of years of oppression and the patriarchal system model, the sexist of that time still affects the woman’s nowadays.
In Brazil, for example, we have the fifth largest rate of femicide of the world, one women is rapped ever 10 minutes each day, according to data from the Brazilian Public Safety Yearbook, and women still earn on average almost 53% less than men. In terms of political representativeness, women’s are only 10% in the congress when we are 52% of the total population.
As you can see, we still have a lot to archive, and more than just celebrate and send some flowers, we have to debate, demand basics institutional measures and keep an eye on all the rights that were already conquered.