Celebrating International Women's Day

Did you know that New York City was one of the locations that ignited the International Women’s Day movement? In 1908, 15,000 women flooded the streets and marched for their right to vote, better pay, and shorter working hours. After that, women around the world worked together and fought for equal rights. The first International Women’s Day was celebrated in 1911 in various countries like the U.S., Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, thanks to a German activist named Clara Zetkin who proposed the Day to the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Denmark. A few years later, in 1914, March 8th was accepted worldwide to be the day International Women’s Day would take place.

At GIANT, we believe it is important to celebrate International Women’s day, because without these women in STEM, GIANT wouldn’t exist. We owe it to these trailblazers and many others for the fact that women are occupying more positions in STEM fields, they are making more groundbreaking discoveries, and STEM is no longer reserved for men, but is becoming much more open to people of all gender identities – women included. To celebrate Women’s History Month, watch GIANT creative prompts highlighting the achievements of women in STEM+Arts fields. Make sure to grab any arts and crafts materials that you have at home and get started. 

In honor of International Women’s Day, I am writing this blog post to both recognize our GIANT community of women and help others celebrate with us. My name is Maru, and I have been with The GIANT Room since September 2020. I’m sure we can all look back to that time and think about how challenging it was to be right in the middle of a pandemic. Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to have found a role at GIANT, and as a result, a reason to be optimistic in a time of uncertainty. This was a place that combined two of my passions, education and science, in a way that I had not yet encountered. I’d like to take some time to spotlight our amazing co-founders, because without them, The GIANT Room wouldn’t exist. I had the privilege to witness Dr. Azadeh Jamalian and Dr. Jessica Mezei do everything in their power to keep our HUB open. They understood the importance of having a place where children and families could forget everything that was happening in the world, and be free to imagine, create, and have fun. So thank you Azi and Jess for building this wonderful safe-haven for children, where they can bring their ideas and dreams to life.

Celebrating the women that came before us, standing up for women today, and fighting for the ones that come next..