Girl Up spent club time March 8 commemorating International Women’s Day. Executive club leaders and juniors Meg Schwartz and Sarah Schaffer led the meeting which discussed the history of International Women’s Day. Girl Up club focuses on issues like women’s rights and equality that are shared in the message of IWD.

“Today we celebrated IWD by learning about the history of the holiday and talking about powerful women in interesting career fields,” Schwartz said. “The goal was to introduce club members to interesting careers and to give empowering advice from successful women.”  

International Women’s day was first celebrated in 1909 when garment workers in the United States protested a lack of fair wages and working conditions, according to the United Nations. In 1910, IWD was established by the Socialist International to honor any women’s rights issues and to build support for achieving international suffrage for women.

“I didn’t know much about International Women’s Day before club time, so it was really cool to actually learn about the history of the holiday and to hear about some influential women throughout history,” junior club member Lexi Smith said.

Girl Up club, which is a national group of clubs founded by the United Nations, was brought to Sion by Schwartz last school year. Since then, the white week club has organized multiple bake sales and posted information about their mission and how fellow students can get involved in aiding their effort.

“International Women’s Day is about female empowerment and celebrating how far women’s rights have come whole looking at the distance we have yet to go,” Schaffer said. “Girl Up wants to empower women and advocate for narrowing that distance.”