Powor_Gen5
03-02-2005, 03:30 AM
For those not informed about Int'l women's day, here is a run down.
International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.
The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.
1910
The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
1911
As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.
Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.
1913-1914
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.
1917
With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.
The Role of the United Nations
Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, contact:
Development Section
Department of Public Information
Room S-1040, United Nations, New York, NY 10017
Email: mediainfo@un.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by the United Nations Department of Public Information--DPI/1878--January 1997
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Women's Rights Group Campaigns for 'Comfort Women'
An international group fighting violence against women is campaigning for Japan to apologize for conscripting "comfort women" during the colonial period and to compensate the victims.
The V-Day organization plans to hold events around the world, starting with one at New York's U.N. Plaza Hotel to coincide with a general session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. The group wants the Japanese government to take legal responsibility for the "comfort women" pressed into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army. V-Day is trying to gather 1 million signatures to be submitted to the U.N. condemning Japanese attempts to join the U.N. Security Council. It also plans to open museums to the comfort women in Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
A hit play by V-Day founder Eve Ensler, "The Vagina Monologues," will be performed in Korea and Japan in July, including material about the comfort women. The group plans demonstration in the Netherlands, a march in Taiwan and photo exhibitions in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. The campaign will culminate on Aug. 10, with protests outside Japanese embassies around the world.
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For those in the San Francisco bay area, local organizations are putting on onther BRILLIANT performance this year (last year it's was around resilience with child sexual abuse) it is having resilience around areas of people of color. Here it is, in their own words:
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
Loco Bloco, Mission Girls, The Center for Young Women's Development, WILD for Human Rights & The Women's Building present
INDESTRUCTIBLE
Three evenings of performance, music, & art celebrating International Women's Day
March 4-6, 2005
Art exhibit opens at 7pm, show starts at 8pm
The Women's Building
3543 18th Street, San Francisco
Sliding Scale $5-10 (under 1 & $10-30 (18 and over)
Event information / Youth Group Discounts / Childcare requests: 415.431.1180 x17
INDESTRUCTIBLE will move audiences with the raw and revealing stories of three young women who come into their own power under the surreal circumstances of everyday life. Accompanied by a multi-media art exhibit and live music, this annual International Women's Day celebration embraces beauty and pain, drama and secrets, boundaries and the unknown to find a healing strength that is universal. Far from your typical sit-down performance, this intergenerational community production is a creative grassroots masterpiece to uplift the soul.
About the sponsors:
The Women's Building is a vibrant four-story community center dedicated to providing women and girls with the tools to participate equally in society.
The Center For Young Women's Development works to ensure that young women who have been severely impacted by poverty are able to achieve self-sufficiency and become positively engaged in their communities.
Loco Bloco provides underserved multi-ethnic youth with hands-on experience in the live public performance of music, dance and theater.
Mission Girls, a program of Mission Neighborhood Centers strives to provide high-quality, culturally appropriate human services to young Latinas in the Mission district.
WILD for Human Rights advances human rights in the U.S. through the conscious leadership and action of women and girls.
www.locobloco.org
Rain Love, Pati
www.generationfive.org
International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.
The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.
1910
The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
1911
As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.
Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.
1913-1914
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.
1917
With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.
The Role of the United Nations
Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, contact:
Development Section
Department of Public Information
Room S-1040, United Nations, New York, NY 10017
Email: mediainfo@un.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by the United Nations Department of Public Information--DPI/1878--January 1997
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Women's Rights Group Campaigns for 'Comfort Women'
An international group fighting violence against women is campaigning for Japan to apologize for conscripting "comfort women" during the colonial period and to compensate the victims.
The V-Day organization plans to hold events around the world, starting with one at New York's U.N. Plaza Hotel to coincide with a general session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. The group wants the Japanese government to take legal responsibility for the "comfort women" pressed into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army. V-Day is trying to gather 1 million signatures to be submitted to the U.N. condemning Japanese attempts to join the U.N. Security Council. It also plans to open museums to the comfort women in Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
A hit play by V-Day founder Eve Ensler, "The Vagina Monologues," will be performed in Korea and Japan in July, including material about the comfort women. The group plans demonstration in the Netherlands, a march in Taiwan and photo exhibitions in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. The campaign will culminate on Aug. 10, with protests outside Japanese embassies around the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those in the San Francisco bay area, local organizations are putting on onther BRILLIANT performance this year (last year it's was around resilience with child sexual abuse) it is having resilience around areas of people of color. Here it is, in their own words:
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
Loco Bloco, Mission Girls, The Center for Young Women's Development, WILD for Human Rights & The Women's Building present
INDESTRUCTIBLE
Three evenings of performance, music, & art celebrating International Women's Day
March 4-6, 2005
Art exhibit opens at 7pm, show starts at 8pm
The Women's Building
3543 18th Street, San Francisco
Sliding Scale $5-10 (under 1 & $10-30 (18 and over)
Event information / Youth Group Discounts / Childcare requests: 415.431.1180 x17
INDESTRUCTIBLE will move audiences with the raw and revealing stories of three young women who come into their own power under the surreal circumstances of everyday life. Accompanied by a multi-media art exhibit and live music, this annual International Women's Day celebration embraces beauty and pain, drama and secrets, boundaries and the unknown to find a healing strength that is universal. Far from your typical sit-down performance, this intergenerational community production is a creative grassroots masterpiece to uplift the soul.
About the sponsors:
The Women's Building is a vibrant four-story community center dedicated to providing women and girls with the tools to participate equally in society.
The Center For Young Women's Development works to ensure that young women who have been severely impacted by poverty are able to achieve self-sufficiency and become positively engaged in their communities.
Loco Bloco provides underserved multi-ethnic youth with hands-on experience in the live public performance of music, dance and theater.
Mission Girls, a program of Mission Neighborhood Centers strives to provide high-quality, culturally appropriate human services to young Latinas in the Mission district.
WILD for Human Rights advances human rights in the U.S. through the conscious leadership and action of women and girls.
www.locobloco.org
Rain Love, Pati
www.generationfive.org