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March 8, is an occasion for women in all continents to come together to celebrate and to look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development, as is often said.

The occasion in France evokes the memories of the French Revolution, when Parisian women calling for ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ marched on Versailles to demand women’s suffrage.

The role of the United Nations has been to strike an international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right by the member nations to initiate programmes to advance the status of women worldwide.

Now, it is widely held 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’.

It was only 1975, during the UN-declared International Women’s Year, that the United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8. In 1977, the General Assembly officially adopted a resolution in which it proclaimed a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.