The first International Women's Day In 1869 British MP John
Stuart Mill was the first person in Parliament to call for
women's right to vote. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became
the first country in the world to give women the right to vote.
Women in other countries did not enjoy this equality and
campaigned for justice for many years. In 1910 a second
International Conference of Working Women was held in
Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's
Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the
idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every
year in every country there should be a celebration on the same
day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference
of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions,
socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the
first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted
Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus
International Women's Day was the result. The very first Inter