By Nicole Baldwin
International Women’s Day just passed and Western New England University put on a special event to celebrate it. This event happened on Tuesday, March 8th in Rivers and provided a variety of activities to do. It was organized by Michaela McCormick and Anna Cichon. It was the first time the Society of Women Engineers and the Women in Business club have come together to put on this event.
This event was sponsored by the Alumni Association Grant and with that sponsor, each of the clubs was able to provide poster signing, celebratory cupcakes, “The Future is Female” t-shirts for tie-dying, and a raffle with Lorde tickets plus gift cards for Ulta, DoorDash, and Starbucks to win. WNEK played women artist songs throughout the event.
They invited women-owned vendors including Leah Cunha Crafts, Messina Clothing, and Sinetra Fraser’s jewelry for people to purchase women-made items and support each of their businesses. All of the vendors mentioned at the event are current students or alumni of Western New England University. During the event, the Society of Women Engineers also included a small engineering event of racing frictionless cars combined with a challenge that required students to think outside the box and use household materials in order to both increases the speed of these cars and the distance they go the following landing, hoping to spark interest in STEM and encourage women in STEM.
Additionally, the Title IX coordinator was invited to share information with students on campus about International Women’s Day. Overall, around 100 people attended this wonderful event and it turned out to be a success. There are also other events happening on campus to celebrate women this month such as U&ME doing a series of talks that you can attend and learn more about what makes celebrating women so special this month.
Why is international women’s day so important to celebrate? It is to honor women and their hard-earned achievements over the years. It became a holiday out of socialism, protest, and a fight for labor rights. Women were not allowed to work, vote, or be a part of sports before the
1960s.
Over the years women have achieved each of these goals and defied the odds of what society expects of women so this day is special for women to celebrate these achievements. Women also do so much more as they provide children and have shown how strong and independent they are on their own. Society has doubted women and their powerful abilities to do more than cooking and cleaning for years. Women proving this is not only what they are good at is shocking to society because they never saw women as being more than a housewife.
It makes me happy to see that a lot of people celebrate this day by spreading information on the history and the importance of celebrating women on social media and through the recent event on our college campus. I have also seen other college campuses celebrate International Women’s Day through social media, from people that I graduated high school with.
What can I do to help celebrate women’s achievements? Read books, magazines, articles on powerful women in history, listen and share radio programs by and about women, honor the women around you such as your mom, female friends, and female coworkers. Also, getting involved in more activities or clubs that involve equality between men and women is a great way to celebrate International Women’s Day every day.
