March 8 holiday in Ukraine in 2024: will we celebrate

Will March 8 be a holiday in Ukraine / ua.depositphotos.comFor several years now, Ukraine has been discussing refusing to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8. The main argument is that it is a Soviet holiday. But it is not quite so. Who and when invented this day, how it changed during history and whether there will be a holiday on March 8 in Ukraine in 2024 - we tell in the material.

• History of March 8 - official and unofficial versions
• Where was transferred on March 8 in Ukraine
• When is Women's Day celebrated in Ukraine in 2024

History of March 8 - official and unofficial versions

International Women's Day has several versions. In short, the chronology of the appearance of the holiday looks like this:

• March 8, 1857, New York - textile factory workers staged an action and demanded the same pay as men, a 10-hour workday (instead of 16) and the right to vote.
• 1908 - the initiative was taken up by the Socialist Party of the USA. This holiday has been celebrated there since 1909.
• March 8, 1910, Copenhagen - a women's forum was held, where, on the initiative of Klara Zetkin (she represented the Social Democrats of Germany), this day, March 8, was made an international holiday. On this date, women were going to go on demonstrations to draw society's attention to women's issues.
• March 19, 1911 - International Women's Day was celebrated in several countries (Germany, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland).
• 1917, Petrograd - a women's demonstration took place. The action became known as the February Revolution, its date according to the old style is February 23 (according to the new it is March 8).
• The beginning of the 1920s - the holiday was approved in the USSR.
• 1977 - the UN granted March 8 the status of an international day, it was called the International Day of Struggle for Women's Rights and International Peace.

The March 8 holiday also has an unofficial version. Allegedly, in 1857 in New York, it was not the workers of textile factories who protested, but representatives of the oldest profession in the world - prostitutes. Their demands were slightly different: to pay the sailors a salary, so that they could pay off the "priestesses of love".

In 1894, on March 8, a demonstration of prostitutes took place in Paris - women demanded the same rights as seamstresses or bakers, and the creation of their trade unions. In 1895 in Chicago and in 1896 in New York, similar actions took place, and in 1910, it is alleged that Clara Zetkin herself with Rosa Luxemburg, her friend, took a prostitute to the streets of Germany - they demanded an end to the arbitrariness of the police.

The unofficial version of the holiday was kept quiet in the USSR - the country needed labor strikers who know how to drive a tractor and harden steel, so Women's Day in the USSR had a political color for a long time, and the very image of a Soviet woman was primarily a "worker, mother and communist". But in the 1970s, in Soviet schools, boys began to congratulate girls on this day, and after the collapse of the Union, the holiday became romantic and turned into "the day of spring, beauty and femininity."

Where was transferred on March 8 in Ukraine

The discussion about which holiday on March 8 should be celebrated in Ukraine and whether it is necessary at all has been going on for several years. Many Ukrainians believe that it is time to cancel Soviet holidays, including International Women's Day. On February 14, 2023, a draft law was registered in the Verkhovna Rada - it proposes to abandon March 8, and instead celebrate and make Ukrainian Women's Day on February 25 (the birthday of Lesya Ukrainka). A poll on this issue was even conducted in the "Action" application : they asked whether March 8 should be kept as an official holiday, or whether it should be made a working holiday Ukrainians voted to keep the holiday on March 8

When is Women's Day celebrated in Ukraine in 2024

Although many perceive March 8 as a communist relic, it remains an official state holiday. Women's Day in Ukraine 2024 will be celebrated, as before, on March 8.

Earlier we told whether March 8 will be a holiday in Ukraine.

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