International Women's Day

8 March 2006

International Women's Day is held on 8 March each year, and, women in Western Australia (WA) join thousands of women across the nation and the world to celebrate this day.

International Women's Day is a time when women from different parts of the world come together to commemorate women's struggle for equality, justice, peace and development. It is a day to think about how women's solidarity changed the world outlook through their struggle to participate in society on an equal footing with men. The first national women's day was observed in the United States of America on 28 February 1908 and since then, women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of February throughout Europe. The theme during that time was the right to vote, right to work, equal pay, better working conditions and peace. In 1975, the UN began to celebrate the 8th of March as the IWD.

This is an important occasion for all of the nation to reflect on our achievements, barriers and especially our participation in the initiatives to remove those barriers.