4 things to know about International Women’s Day
Origins
The observance originated in a series of protests organized by women to advocate for greater equality with men, with approximately 15,000 women staging a demonstration in New York City in 1908.
From 1909 to 1913, per the advocacy of the Socialist Party of America, an earlier observance known as National Women's Day was celebrated every last Sunday in February.
According to the International Women's Day organization, the modern observance was first celebrated on March 19, 1911, in the nations of Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
"More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination," IWD explained.
"On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on February 23, the last Sunday in February."
IWD would get its current annual March 8 date in 1914 due to Russian activists, who were still using an older calendar, as that date "translated in the widely adopted Gregorian calendar from February 23."
