What Is International Women's Day?
Every year on the 8th March, millions of people around the world celebrate International Women's Day (IWD). The day honours the achievements of women in social, economic, cultural and political arenas. It is also a call to action to accelerate women's equality everywhere. By taking part in #IWD2025 events, we help keep up the pressure to change attitudes to equality for women in all aspects of life.
In 2025, the theme for International Women's Day is Accelerate Action. The struggle for equality has been going on for centuries. We've made a lot a progress but it has been slow going. It is estimated that, at the past rate of progress, we will finally have full equality in the year 2158.
This year's theme is aimed at picking up the pace, emphasizing the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality sooner - let's #AccelerateAction.
How Can You Help?
We can all take steps to Accelerate Action. If you see stereotyping, bias, discrimination, don't let it go - call it out. Celebrate women's success. Encourage and support women in their lives and careers.
Where Did International Women's Day Begin?
International Women's Day as we know it today was founded in 1910 in Copenhagen with the first IWD rallies and events taking place on 19th March 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. More than 1 million women and men attended the rallies, campaigning for women's rights to vote, work, be trained, hold public office and to end discrimination.
While you might think that running since 1911 is a long time to be carrying on a campaign, the reality is that the fight for women's equality has been going for much longer. In 1776 in America, a letter was written to the Continental Congress urging them to consider women's rights and protections as they drafted new laws in the Declaration of Independence.
So nearly 250 years later, we still don't have full equality for women. We've seen huge improvements with major milestones such as:
The right to vote
The right to stand for Parliament
The right to proper medical care
The right to fair legal support
The right to equal pay
The right to proper education
The right to access the same public areas as men
The right to wear certain clothes
While we are arguably at the closest point to equality we have ever been, we're still far short of full equality. We still have fewer women than men in Parliament, leadership roles, science and engineering roles. And the gender pay gap is still a very real issue.
Join with us and help #AccelerateAction for #IWD2025