International Women's Day

Women’s History month is in full swing already, but International Women’s Day is probably the most important day of it all.
The day was first celebrated all the way back in 1908, when the Socialist party in the US designated 28 Feb to honour the garment workers’ strike in New York in the same year. A year later, the Socialist International established an international day to celebrate women after a meeting in Copenhagen, but no fixed date was chosen.
The first official International Women’s day was celebrated in 1911, but it soon became a mechanism to protest the First World War.
As part of the peace movement, Russian women observed the day on the last Sunday in February, while elsewhere in Europe, women held rallies on 8 March either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists.
In 1917, women in Russia again chose to strike for “Bread and Peace” on the last Sunday in February (which is 8 March on the Gregorian calendar). Four days later, the Tsar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.
The UN adopted the date as the official day to celebrate women’s achievements in 1975. Since then, there have always been many events put forward to showcase female talent.
Orange Tree Theatre will be debuting ‘Humble Boy’ by Charlotte Jones, a witty family comedy in which an astrophysicist is forced to solve the riddle to his emotional life, which proves harder than proving string theory. Tickets are available here.
‘High Society’, the exhibition put together by the Rijksmuseum opens today and will be open until 3 June 2018. It will look at four centuries of glamour with art by the great masters of the history of art, including Cranach, Veronese, Velázquez, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sargent, Munch and Manet. To book tickets, visit here.
To coincide with the date, Victoria and Albert museum are releasing the advance tickets for ‘Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up”, an extraordinary collection of the artist’s personal items and clothing. This is the first time that the collection has left Mexico after being locked away for 50 years after her death and will be open from 16 June. Tickets can be booked here.
The Stratford Circus Arts Centre will be holding its very own mini-festival celebrating women artists and performers. The event runs from 6 March until 9 March, with a show about women’s boxing on 8 March, and with the launch of Shanaz Dorsett’s single on 9 March. For more information visit this page.
> Borislava Todorova