Momodou,

Thank you for your greetings on this day.

I agree:  I miss hearing from Jabou Joh.  Her comments were always 
thoughtful and interesting.

Jane

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Jane Zainab Warner-Tholley
Seattle, Washington

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On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Momodou Camara wrote:

> Today March 8, which is a major day of global celebration for the economic,
> political and social achievements of women, I hereby send warm greetings to
> all mothers, sisters and daughters out there.
> Sister Jabou Joh where are you? I hope that you forgive me for what ever
> wrong judgement I might have made during my term as list manager. No one is
> perfect. We miss your opinion here on the Gambia-l. Please don’t give up
> the struggle.
>
> Regards,
> Momodou Camara
>
> Below is a brief history about this day that I culled from the UN website:
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Women's Day
>
> International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups
> around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and
> is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all
> continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic,
> cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate
> their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine
> decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
> International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of
> history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate
> in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata
> initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the
> French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality,
> fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.
> The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the
> century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and
> turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is
> a brief chronology of the most important events:
> 1909
> In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the
> first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28
> February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month
> through 1913.
> 1910
> The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's
> Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights
> and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was
> greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17
> countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish
> parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
> 1911
> As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year,
> International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in
> Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million
> women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to
> hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training
> and to an end to discrimination on the job.
> Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York
> City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian
> and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour
> legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to
> the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International
> Women's Day.
> 1913-1914
> As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian
> women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in
> February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following
> year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity
> with their sisters.
> 1917
> With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose
> the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political
> leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The
> rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the
> provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic
> Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia,
> but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
> Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global
> dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The
> growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four
> global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the
> commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's
> rights and participation in the political and economic process.
> Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress
> made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination
> by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of
> women's rights.
>
> The Role of the United Nations
> Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and
> widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal
> rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco
> in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality
> as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped
> create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards,
> programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
> Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has
> taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of
> public opinion and international action; training and research, including
> the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to
> disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of
> the United Nations is 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.
>
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