First noticed greater than 115 years in the past, it’s developed right into a widespread celebration that honours ladies previous and current who fought for gender equality and for funding female-focused charities.
It additionally appears to be like forward: celebrating future generations of ladies and all of the unbelievable female-led actions occurring world wide.
Underneath the brand new annual theme, organisers are inviting women and men to partake in marketing campaign efforts to lift consciousness.
Right here’s what Worldwide Girls’s Day is about and how one can become involved on this 12 months’s occasion.
What’s Worldwide Girls’s Day?
Worldwide Girls’s Day (IWD) is a world day celebrating the social, financial, cultural, and political achievements of ladies.
Origins in ladies’s suffrage have developed right into a day of celebration and development of ladies’s rights.
How did Worldwide Girls’s Day start?
The primary official Worldwide Girls’s Day was in 1975, when it was recognised by the United Nations (UN).
However its origins date again to 1908, when a ladies’s rights march in New York Metropolis drew 15,000 folks advocating for higher pay and voting rights.
IWD was then commemorated in the US on February 28, 1909, with international locations like Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland becoming a member of the event in 1911.
Clara Zetkin instructed the occasion be taken world on the Worldwide Convention of Working Girls in Copenhagen in 1910.
The date wasn’t formalised till a wartime strike in 1917, when Russian ladies demanded “bread and peace”. 4 days into the strike, the tsar was pressured to abdicate, and the provisional authorities granted ladies emancipation.
The strike started on March 8, and this turned the date that Worldwide Girls’s Day is well known.
What’s the theme this 12 months for Worldwide Girls’s Day?
The theme for Worldwide Girls’s Day 2026 is ‘Give to Acquire’ and is supposed to emphasize that giving time, knoweldge and help can profit everybody.
In keeping with the IWD web site: “We are able to all give our help to realize development for girls and women.
“As people, giving help means calling out stereotypes, difficult discrimination, questioning bias, celebrating ladies’s success, and extra.”
“Sharing our data and encouragement with others can be key.
“On a regular basis, all over the place, how will you actively give your help to realize gender equality?”
What’s occurring on the day and in London?
There are many occasions occurring throughout London to mark Worldwide Girls’s Day on March 8, in addition to Girls’s Historical past Month. Among the occasions you might wish to participate in embody:
Shoreditch Town Hall: An IWD tour of the Grade II Listed constructing, recalling the tales of suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, and ladies’s rights advocates, together with Helen Taylor, and Henrietta Girling OBE.
Soho: The Her-Story Worldwide Girls’s Day Live performance is going down at The Phoenix Arts Membership, bringing collectively a mixture of musical theatre performances from ladies locally.
Bishopgate: IWD pledges workshop and charity run, inviting folks to get pleasure from a “brunch-style gathering centred on generosity and intention”.
Piccadilly: Afternoon tea is being hosted at Fortnum & Mason, bringing collectively ladies from all walks of life for significant conversations and fundraising.
The IWD campaign is calling for people to use this year’s hashtags and for all IWD events to include a component of women-focused fundraising.
The Worldwide Girls’s Day web site additionally contains an arsenal of free resources, together with graphics and occasion concepts so you may participate in your personal means.
Will we nonetheless want an Worldwide Girls’s Day?
The brief reply is sure.
Whereas ladies’s rights and the equality narrative have excelled in some components of the world, the truth is that girls nonetheless face numerous challenges due to their gender — even within the UK.
The World Financial Discussion board beforehand claimed that gender parity is a couple of century away, which means there’s an extended strategy to go.
The World Financial institution additionally revealed that 2.4 billion ladies of working age world wide don’t obtain equal financial alternatives in comparison with males.
This marketing campaign is as a lot for future generations as it’s for folks at present. It’s about bringing these subjects to the forefront, shining a lightweight on the challenges and discovering impactful outcomes.
