三八妇女节的由来（英文介绍）

　　International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers⁴ of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated⁵ a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage⁶.

　　The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence⁷, booming population growth and radical⁸ ideologies⁹. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:

　　1909

　　In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist¹⁰ Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.

　　1910

　　The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed¹¹ date was selected for the observance.

　　1911

　　As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.

　　Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic¹² Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked¹³ during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.

　　1913-1914

　　As part of the peace movement brewing¹⁴ on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity¹⁵ with their sisters.

　　1917

　　With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing¹⁶ of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate¹⁷ and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.

　　Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated¹⁸ efforts to demand women's rights and participation¹⁹ in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

　　The Role of the United Nations

　　Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender²⁰ equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy²¹ of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.

　　Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement²² of women has taken four clear directions: promotion²³ of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation²⁴ of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.

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