On March 8, 1911, over a million people poured into the streets of Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland for the very first International Women's Day. They carried signs demanding the right to vote, fair pay, and the chance to work any job a man could. Just one week later, a terrible factory fire in New York killed 146 workers, most of them young women, and the new holiday became even more important as a day to fight for safer workplaces.
The idea had been sparked two years earlier by Clara Zetkin, a German activist who proposed at an international meeting that women everywhere should pick one day to stand up together. The world was changing fast. Women in New Zealand had already won the right to vote in 1893, but in most countries they couldn't. Women in Russia held a massive march on this day in 1917 that helped trigger a revolution. By 1975, the United Nations officially recognized March 8 as International Women's Day.
Today the holiday is celebrated in more than 100 countries. In some places, like Italy, people give yellow mimosa flowers. In Russia, men buy gifts and flowers for the women in their lives. In schools all over the world, kids learn about pioneers like Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai, and Katherine Johnson. The march that started in 1911 with a million voices is still going more than a century later, growing louder every year as people remember that progress happens when ordinary people decide together that things can be better.
