International holidays - International Feminism Day

A person cannot be discriminated against based on race, gender or religion. Feminists have been fighting for equal rights for women for almost two hundred years. Their position is distinguished by social activity and categorical disagreement with gender discrimination, which is why one of the symbols of the movement became a woman warrior - Joan of Arc. Every year on May 30, the day of the execution of the national heroine of France, International Feminism Day is celebrated. The traditional color of the movement is purple. The symbol of feminism is the mirror of Venus and the clenched fist depicted against its background. The anti-sexism symbol appeared in 1969 and was first used during protests against the Miss America beauty pageant. The immediate creator and designer of the symbol is the famous radical feminist Robin Morgan, but her future husband Morgan drew the emblem. It is believed that the movement for social, political and economic rights of women appeared in the mid-19th - early 20th centuries. American women were among the first to make a breakthrough in this direction. In 1848, the US Women's Rights Congress signed the Declaration of Sentiments. It talked about the rights to education, property and marriage equality. The issue of equal economic rights for both sexes was raised long before the declaration was issued. In the XIV century. Women artisans rallied in Italy demanding wages commensurate with men. The first female writers appeared in the 19th century. Despite the fact that “women’s literature” was represented by sentimental novels, it is with its appearance that the beginning of the spread of feminist ideas is associated. Although a hundred years earlier, the question of the need to equalize the rights of the sexes was raised by great male thinkers and writers - Voltaire, Helvetius and Montesquieu. At the end of the 19th century. Feminists' demands for granting them the right to vote were heard in many countries around the world. The center of suffragism, the movement of women’s struggle for the opportunity to vote in elections, became England, and Emmeline Pankhurst is considered its founder. In France in the mid-twentieth century. Simone de Beauvoir was a prominent representative of feminism. The writer demanded recognition of a woman as a socially significant subject, which is necessary for her realization and the formation of her own individuality. The feminist movement came to Russia with the revolution of 1917 in the person of Alexandra Kollontai. The diplomat and public figure came up with the idea of ​​a “new woman” who should be a hard worker and a fighter, active in social life, independent and not dependent on a man. The followers of the theory of “Marxist feminism” were called Kollontaevkas in the Soviet Union. In the spirit of revolutionary times and the ideas of “free love,” they promoted women’s rights to “wingless eros”—having sex without mutual obligations. “Winged eros,” based on the emotional attachment of partners, was not condemned, but its time had to come after the construction of a new society where everyone would be equal. Sociologists distinguish three waves of feminism - the struggle of women for their rights, which has been going on since the end of the 19th century. to this day. Despite the successes achieved, representatives of the movement do not intend to stop there and advocate further positive changes in the position of women in society. International Feminism Day, which is celebrated annually by movement activists and those who consider gender discrimination a relic of the past, also calls for this.