International Women's Day

I’m quite sick and Daryl sweetly offered write this up as a guest post. Thanks Daryl!

Tomorrow, March 8th, is International Women’s Day. It originally started in the US in 1909, and in 1977 the United Nations adopted a resolution calling upon its member states to proclaim a day for women’s rights and international peace known as International Women’s Day (IWD).

It symbolizes how far women around the world have come in their struggle for equality and recognizes the many challenges that remain.

In 30 countries around the world, including China, Brazil, Italy, and Russia, it’s an official holiday.

The history of it can be found here, with more general information about it here.

Ironically (with the recent high-profile domestic violence cases going on), the theme for this year is “Women and Men: United to End Violence against Women.”

Here’s Yahoo’s page on IWD.

And to show you why it’s still important to do things like this:

There’s a global women’s rights treaty called CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). It was adopted by the UN in 1979, and as of this year there are only 8 countries who HAVEN’T ratified it. Those would be Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Iran, Nauru, Palau, Tonga… and the United States.

The text of CEDAW can be found here.