In my opinion, if there is one usually forgotten, often-ignored and least-observed world holiday, it has to be International Women’s Day (IWD), which falls on March 8 each year.

History has it that the earliest Women’s Day observance can be traced back to Feb 28, 1909, when a group of women gathered in New York to commemorate an 1857 protest by female garment workers demanding workplace equality.

I doubt how many know this history of the holiday and understand its significance. What I’ve noticed in recent years is that many women, consciously or unconsciously, have fallen victim to materialism that has tried to sugarcoat — and ultimately alter — the nature of IWD.

Male students at some of the most prestigious universities in China — Tsinghua, and Peking, for example — on March 8 made national headlines by putting up banners on campus broadcasting their affection for women.

If you think “You are my Goddess, enslave me” is outrageous, check this one: “Sentence me to be your captive, lifelong.”

Insanity permeates department stores and shopping malls throughout the country, promoting the generic notion that “only by buying whatever your woman wants can she fathom your love”.

What has been going wrong?

We can’t celebrate IWD in the same way as we celebrate New Year’s Day, or any day of joy and jubilation, because it evokes a dark period in history when women were deprived of the right to vote, to be represented or to be treated equally under the law.

Long before the United Nations officially adopted March 8 as International Women’s Day in 1977, tens of thousands of female forerunners had fought relentlessly for women’s rights and emancipation.

In China, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong and the then leadership launched a series of campaigns to help raise women’s social status. Women were encouraged to study and get rid of illiteracy. The first constitution, which was implemented in 1950, emphasized freedom of marriage, monogamy, and equality of rights between men and women.

“Women hold up half the sky” was one of Mao’s household sayings that inspired numerous women to step forward and play a role in society equally important to their male counterparts’. Since the 1950s, the chorus of heroines in China — from female astronauts, soldiers, and physicians to scientists, farmers and educators — has been resounding.

On March 9, a group of mixed nationalities gathered in Glendale, California, to celebrate IWD by commemorating Kim Bok-dong, a vocal human rights activist and a “comfort woman” survivor who died in January at the age of 92.

Kim demonstrated over the past 30 years for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government for their war crimes during the Second World War.

An estimated 200,000 women from countries including Korea, the Philippines, China and Indonesia were forced into sexual slavery and “served” between five to 60 soldiers a day, according to research from Shanghai Normal University.

As US President Donald Trump said in his statement on the International Women’s Day, “Through the efforts of remarkable women trailblazers in the United States and around the world, we have made tremendous progress in the fight for equality and justice for all.”

True, but much work still remains to be done.

Contact the writer at junechang@chinadailyusa.com