Tomorrow (Saturday, March the 8th) is International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day has been celebrated since its inception in the early 1900’s. This was a time of great industrial expansion during a period that saw ever increasing population growth and the rise of radical ideologies (not to mention the two World Wars due to which women went into the factories to do work that had previously been the remit of men).
Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany were the first countries to recognise International Womens Day on the 19th of March 1911. At that point (a mere 100 years ago) women were campaigning for the right to vote, the right to work, the right to be trained and the right to hold public office.
Read comment from @F_Lagerberg & #GTIBR women in biz stats in @FT special report via http://t.co/DgyGbH6Wap @WomensDay
— Grant Thornton (@GrantThornton) March 7, 2014
What else has changed for women in business over the past 100 years? Whilst we still have to fight for equal payment we can be consoled by the fact that at least we aren’t strapping ourselves to railings ala Emmeline Pankhurst, the political activist who was arrested outside Buckingham Palace in 1914 whilst trying to deliver a petition to King George V. The launch of the International Womens Day website in 2001 gave women a global united voice. Many large organisations now have their own internal events and the search giant Google changes its logo in honour of the day.
