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March 8, International Women’s Day, has been globally celebrated this year under the theme “Choose to Challenge.” The basis for this holiday, which is a public holiday in some countries while it is largely ignored elsewhere, was the International Socialist Women’s Conference held in August 1910 in Copenhagen, Denmark. A year later on March 19, 1911, International Women’s Day was marked for the first time by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. The primary aim of International Women’s Day is to ensure women’s rights.
March 8, which is a public holiday in Eritrea, began to be celebrated during the armed struggle for independence. In 1979, the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW) was established, and its primary objective was to mobilize and organize women to participate in the national liberation struggle. It raised women’s consciousness by conducting meetings and seminars, organized demonstrations by Eritreans in the diaspora to expose the atrocities of the Ethiopian army, fought against the forced conscription of youngsters, mobilized members of NUEW in areas under the Ethiopian occupation to gather information about the enemy, raise funds, secure important items such as medicines for the fighters in the field and planned, guided and sometimes executed guerrilla activities. Making up a third of the freedom fighters, Eritrean women played a big role in the struggle for Eritrea’s independence and paved the way for the nation’s development. That is how they proved and earned their equality.