Greetings on the Occasion of International Women’s Day
Today it is important to remember that over 100 years ago International Women’s Day was inaugurated, and to recall why it was established. From the beginning, the Socialist International conference (held in Copenhagen in 1910) had planned to establish a day to honour the movement for women’s rights and universal suffrage. The tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, where women workers and migrants died in 1911, is another key memorial.
These two moments were the pillars for achieving political rights – female suffrage was obtained in the twentieth century. And legal advances – the Triangle disaster forced major legislative changes in labour and industrial safety and health standards in the US, which were imitated by several countries.
I send greetings of solidarity to all women in Ecuador, America, and the world, for being the engine of change, the arms of the political, social and economic struggle, and for achieving significant advances in the historical process of building a more egalitarian, a more equal, and a more united world.
Linda Machuca Moscoso
President of the Group of Women Parliamentarians
Member of the Assembly of Ecuador
