Today we are celebrating International Women's Day!
On this day, women (and men) across the world pay tribute to female figures who fought for their advancement of rights.
It is also a day where, year after year, women make their demands heard. And to find solutions together to improve the lives of girls and women.
What colours to wear on international women's day?
Purple, the colour of feminists
Since the end of the 19th century, purple has been the traditional colour of feminists. Before being the colour of the feminists of the 1970s, this colour, was already sported by suffragists.
Mauve, violet, lavender, this is the tone in vogue in the 1970s. A time when feminist movements took on a certain scale. Did feminists adopt it for the wisdom and spirituality it symbolised then? To mean that beyond a body, every woman is endowed with a spirit.
Anyway, on the palette, there was hardly any choice left: red, black, blue and white were already associated with well-known and male political movements. Some say that they, therefore, chose purple and mauve out of provocation. A way of reclaiming them by diverting them from the colour codes usually imposed on women: candy pink, soft mauve and other pastel tones. Ooh, the mean girls with purple ribbons!
Suffragettes: purple, green and white
For the suffragists of the interwar period, the colour choice of purple may have had to do with it being associated with "demi-mourning."
A period of dark purple clothing succeeding the colour black of the first year of mourning.
On the other hand, the colour purple was already present at the beginning of the 19th century, in the first women's movements demanding the right to vote, notably in England and the United States. They wore colourful ribbons pinned to their clothes during demonstrations.
From 1908, the use of three colours was systematic. Purple for dignity, green for hope (and fertility) and white for purity.
Egalitarian purple
Purple now characterises movements fighting for equality between men and women, whether by tradition or for the sake of opting for an intermediate shade. Indeed, take candy pink paint like the girls and sky-blue paint like the boys, mix the two, you get purple!
Other colours are sometimes associated with women's movements, such as white, gold and green.
“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”-Michelle Obama