Community
16 March, 2025
In honour of tireless women
International Women’s Day (IWD) officially took place last Saturday, March 8, with events taking place all around the world.
Port Douglas was no exception, with a lunch held at Salsa Bar and Grill on Friday, the day before.
This was the 28th IWD lunch to be held in Port and was attended by over 100 ladies from the Douglas Shire.
This event is one of the major fundraiser events for the Port Douglas Neighbourhood Centre, with proceeds going to provide free counselling sessions for Douglas Shire families (144 sessions were provided last year).
Entertainment was arranged by local musical director Jennifer Kerr, with support from some of the talented cast of the Clink Theatre’s next exciting production, ‘Mamma Mia!’.
Guests also enjoyed a mini fashion show featuring dresses, shoes and accessories from the NicNak Shed Op Shop.
The history of this annual day began well over 100 years ago in 1908, when 15,000 women took to the streets in New York protesting for shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.
Other issues addressed included terrible working conditions and exploitation.
The following year, the Socialist Party of America announced a National Women’s Day to honour the strikers and in 1910 it went global with the Socialist International voting for the creation of a Women’s Day to advocate for suffrage.
The first IWD was held in 1911 and more than a million people turned out to rallies in Europe.
For most of the 20th century IWD was acknowledged and celebrated by people at the grassroots level, a rallying point for social justice.
It wasn’t until 1975 that the United Nations adopted IWD on March, as it still is today,
This year’s official United Nations theme for IWD was ‘For all women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.’
The key aim of the day is to recognise how far we’ve come towards gender equality and also how far we have left to go. Back in 1911, only eight countries allowed women to vote, equal pay for equal work was unheard of if women were allowed to work at all and reproductive rights were non-existent.
Without doubt, things have come a long way, from women not being able to vote, to now leading countries.
While they faced restrictions on where they could worked, they are now running corporations.
In countries, such as Australia, women have rights their grandmothers could only have dreamed about, but many around the world are not anywhere near as close to that goal.
Even in Australia, despite domestic violence laws, public awareness and access to legal protections, men are still killing women partners or ex-partners at the rate of one a week.
All up, much progress has been made, but there is still more to be achieved.
Hence the need for events such as the one last Friday.
Naturally a great time was had by all as part of the day.
I’m off to raise a glass to all of our local ladies, so for now it’s Gazza signing out.
Send your stories to gazza@cairnslocalnews.com.au
