Happy International Women’s Day!
It’s a bit off-topic for this blog, but I think it’s an important holiday, and it’s somewhat related to communication, because this is one of those holidays, the discourse around which has been changing through the years. Since I’m most familiar with the Russian discourse around this holiday, this is what I will mostly talk about.
Although this holiday is international by nature, as the name suggests, it is celebrated differently in some parts of the world, and it is barely celebrated at all in others. It is actually quite interesting to see how the discourse around this holiday has changed since its inception.
It was Clara Tsetkin, a famous German politician and women’s rights activist who, in 1910, at the International Conference of Women Socialists in Copenhagen, proposed celebrating the International Women’s day. At first this day was marked only in a few European countries, mostly by rallies that demanded the right of women to vote, to work, to receive professional training, and to be treated equally on the job. The holiday started being recognized in more and more countries, and in some, like Russia, it even became an official day off. In Russia, after the Revolution, it also took an additional role of diverting people from celebrating religious holidays like Shrovetide that had been celebrated around the same time of year. Later, probably during the so-called ‘period of stagnation’ (1970s – early 1980s), when the official propaganda was aimed at convincing the people that there were no problems left in the country, and everyone was treated equally and fairly, this holiday was slowly transformed into a combination of Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day in the USSR. Men presented women with flowers and gifts, and it became in a way a celebration of spring, beauty and femininity. So, as you can see, the original idea was turned upside down. Then, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, some of the former republics have dropped this holiday altogether, lest it remind their people about their Soviet past. And recently, from what I hear, many women in Russia have been rebuking the idea of the International Women’s Day, but not because its original idea has been abandoned, but because… it designates only one day per year when women should be appreciated.
In the meanwhile, in 1975, during International Women’s Year, the United Nations began celebrating 8 March as International Women’s Day. In adopting its resolution on the observance of Women’s Day, the General Assembly cited two reasons: to recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women; and to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security. So, the UN took the original idea and added its twist to it, stressing the idea of international peace. The UN has been supporting a large number of programs and events related to women’s rights in different countries.
Nowadays the urgency and passion of the original idea seems to have been subdued, and, sadly, in most countries all the media does is simply state that this is the International Women’s Day, but nothing else really happens.
Now, I won’t tell you what my favorite reincarnation of this holiday would be, but I think it deserves to be celebrated. Since the nature of this holiday has been so volatile, maybe it could become a holiday with an open meaning, in which women can be celebrated in different ways, depending on your beliefs.
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