International Women's Day Observed

`The Other Voice` and `Making Only New Scene ` are the attractive media events of the Women Day 2006 . However huge number NGOs and civil society organizations reconfirm, `w ithout women's participation, nation never can move towards development`. The TV channels also broadcast special programs along with different organizations` event, seminar, human-chain, campaign. The city was empowered with the women voice particularly Dhaka University and Shahid Minar area. But waht about villages ? Symbolically we visited `Shingair village of Manakgong district in this day; and asked to `Jamila Begam` about the Women Day and women rights, but could not say anything, just laugh without stop, `egula ki kon, buji na…` ( I can not understand, what you are saying...)

The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Among other relevant historic events, it commemorates the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (New York, 1911), where over 140 women lost their lives. The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions. Women from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on 8 March 1857 in New York City. The garment workers were protesting what they saw as very poor working conditions and low wages. The protesters were attacked and dispersed by police. These women established their first labor union in the same month two years later.

More protests followed on 8 March in subsequent years, most notably in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In 1910 the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen by the Socialist International and an 'International Women's Day' was established, which was submitted by the important German Socialist Clara Zetkin. The following year, IWD was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. However, soon thereafter, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed over 140 garment workers. A lack of safety measures was blamed for the high death toll. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across Europe held peace rallies on 8 March 1913. In the West, International Women's Day was commemorated during the 1910s and 1920s, but dwindled. It was revived by the rise of feminism in the 1960s.

Demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday, and it was established, but was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965 by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day was declared as a non working day in the USSR "in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace".

When Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet Block this celebration was supported officially and gradually turned into parody. During the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) the International Women's Day (in Czech: Mezinárodní den žen, in Slovak: Medzinárodný deň žien, abbreviated as MDŽ) was used as a tool of the party propaganda, which hoped to convince women that the party cared about them and considered their needs in formulating social policy. During the last decades of the regime, this event morphed into a parody of itself. On every March 8th almost every woman got a flower and a small gift (typically soap or a towel) from her employer. Many men took this day as a convenient opportunity to spend the day drinking in the local pub. As a result, the original aim of expressing respect and sympathy to women was completely lost. The party's ritualistic celebration of Women's Day became so stereotypical that it was even ridiculed in movies and on television in Czechoslovakia.