International Women's Day marks its 100th Anniversary on March 8th, 2011. It is the beginning of a year of awareness-raising that while women have come a long way in the industrialized nations, they are not being treated with the same level of respect in the rest of the world where they are the invisible population, uneducated, and, often, the victims of brutality. But even here in the US, life is not rosy. We have newly proposed legislation that will negatively affect health services, child care and more, all issues that affect women disproportionately.

A look at how International Women's Day began from InternationalWomensDay.com:
1911  Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women's Day events. 1911 also saw women's 'Bread & Roses' campaign.

InternationalWomensDay.com offers ways to join in the celebration. Other organizations working globally for women's advancement include The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women,  where they have activated the mWomen campaign (an online petition) to get mobile phones into the hands of rural women around the world, and The Helen Bamber Foundation, also focusing on human rights for women.

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@womensday What do u think will be best outcome of internationalwomensday activity: Awareness, change, equality? http://bit.ly/159KP #IWD