In almost all the world the 8th of March is International Women's Day. Recently, it became a consumer holiday, but we should give more credit to women and their achievements.
We must focus on the importance of women, and to do so, we need to go back in time, to the accomplishments women received in the economic, political and cultural fields through the years, in the world.
I will briefly explain how women's life, culture, social life and work changed.
We know, during prehistoric times that women were considered divinities: because it was said there was a connection between women and the land.
The family was based on a " patriarchy", in which the man was the head of the family.
During Greek times, women were lower than men, even if at home they had an important role: they had to take care of the children, of the house, they had to cook, clean, and spend much of their time home.
During Roman times, women had a little more freedom, they could go to the theatre, but they always had to take care of the family. They used to get married very young, and the father used to decide who was the best man for them. Unfortunately in some places this still happens.
In the Middle Ages instead, there wasn't a big difference between the Christian world and the Muslim world. Women were always submitted to men and all the decisions had to be taken by men. Women used to take care of the domestic environment instead men of the social one.
During the Renaissance, women couldn't perform in plays and all female roles were given to boys.
Only during the First and the Second World Wars women started to work, because men were called to fight in the war, and they had to take care of the family, somehow.
Women's rights achievements were given thanks to their many organizations, one of these is the women's suffrage movement. In the United States this movement went through a long fight until they won the right to vote. It took nearly 100 years to win that right.
On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, declaring for the first time that women, like men, deserved all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Only, on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.
In Italy, instead, women became equal to men when they went to vote for the first time in 1946: only a couple of years later, the Constitution established there was a gender equality.
Many things changed since then, and all of these movements, and all the feminist demonstrations women had during the years around the world, made them become free, to participate in politics, to be heard in social and economic fields and to be elected in important political offices: senators, political leaders and activists.
The first International Women's Day was celebrated the 28thof February 1909 in the United States, in honor of the workers' strike in the clothing industry, when for the first time women protested for their exploited working conditions of the time, working for many hours with a very low salary.
There's a story, we don't know the veracity of this news, that says there was an accident in a garment factory in New York: the owner blocked all the exits, someone set a fire in which 129 women remained closed inside, and all of them died. For example, in Italy, this event is remembered the 8th of March.
It has been a long journey since women have achieved their equal rights, that made them stronger on a social and personal level.
Women have important jobs in financial, economic, social and political environments, they can become doctors, actresses, writers, they can finally follow their dreams.
This is something to be proud of, thanks to all the job movements in the XX century we are able today to be free, to be equal to men and to do whatever jobs we like.
Last but not least, we need and we must continue to fight for our freedom, for our independence, for our life, for our private and social environment. Women have the same rights as men but in some working fields they are still disadvantaged, especially for those women who still have to follow strict rules or are still discriminated. Some of them still haven't got their sexual equality: many women are submitted to men, and all the feminicides that happen every year around the world is a proof that we need to fight for them, those who still are not equal to men in the domestic fields.
We need to fight for this, so that all this violence will stop and until every woman on this planet will be free and have the same sexual equality and civil rights that some countries already have.
