Our Festival
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, some feminists and social activists began to raise serious concerns about women's rights and actively participated in the struggle for women's rights. Some of the most famous figures include:
Mary Wollstonecraft: In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman proposed ideas for women's education, political rights, and economic independence, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern feminism.
Susan B. AnthonyAnthony): One of the important leaders of the feminist movement in the United States in the 19th century, she was actively involved in the movement for women's suffrage and made important progress in this regard.
Florence Nightingale: British**, statistician and social activist, her work in the field of health care and nursing has brought about significant changes in the status of women.
Emily Davidson: An activist for the British women's suffrage movement, she became one of the martyrs of the movement when she lost her life throwing a sign during the 1913 Derby race.
The efforts of these feminists and other activists laid the foundations of the women's liberation movement and inspired the broader struggle for women's rights that followed.
On March 8, 1909, the female Red Girls in Chicago, Illinois, USA, and workers in the textile and garment industries across the country staged a massive strike and demonstration, demanding higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and the right to vote. This was the first organized mass struggle of working women in history, and it fully demonstrated the strength of working women. This struggle won widespread sympathy and enthusiastic response from the masses of women in the whole country and even other countries in the world, and finally won the victory.
Subsequently, on the eve of the First World War, the world was in the shadow of war, and imperialism attempted to carve up the colonies. Against this background, in August 1910, the Danish capital, Copenhagen, convened the Second International Socialist Women's Congress. The meeting, which was attended by representatives of 17 countries, focused on issues such as opposing imperialist arms expansion, defending world peace, protecting the rights of women and children, striving for an eight-hour workday, and women's right to vote. Clara Zetkin, a German socialist revolutionary and outstanding communist fighter, proposed that March 8 be celebrated every year as a day of struggle for women around the world, and this proposal was unanimously supported by the delegates.
Since then, March 8 has been designated as International Women's Day, a holiday for women around the world to fight for their rights and emancipation. The United Nations has celebrated International Women's Day since 1975 to commemorate the important contributions of women in the economic, political and social spheres. In China, this holiday has been commemorated since 1924, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the People's Government Council issued a decree in December 1949 to officially designate March 8 as Women's Day.