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50 free International Women's Day trivia questions with answers. International Women's Day has been marked on 8 March for over a century, but most people know little about how it began. This quiz walks through the whole story: the 1909 Woman's Day in New York, Clara Zetkin's 1910 proposal, the Petrograd textile workers whose walkout toppled a tsar, the day's decades as a communist holiday, and its adoption by the United Nations in 1975. It also covers the traditions that grew up around it, from mimosa flowers in Italy to the purple, white and green of the suffragettes. The second half celebrates the firsts: the first woman in space, the first female prime minister and president, the first woman to run Boston, summit Everest, win a Nobel Prize and sit on the US Supreme Court. Use it for a classroom, an office event or a pub quiz on 8 March. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source and the source is cited under each explanation, so you can trust what you read out.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which date is International Women's Day celebrated each year?
8 March
The date was fixed in memory of the Petrograd women whose 1917 demonstration helped bring down the Russian monarchy.
Q 02The earliest reported 'Woman's Day', organized by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, was held where?
New York City
It was held on 28 February at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel; Americans kept observing the day on the last Sunday of February for years.
Q 03Which German socialist proposed an annual 'Working Women's Day' in 1910?
Clara Zetkin
Her proposal came with no fixed date; the first observances happened across Europe the following year.
Q 04The 1910 socialist women's conference that endorsed a Women's Day met in which city?
Copenhagen
It was held ahead of the general meeting of the Socialist Second International, and the idea was pitched partly as a strategy to win women the vote.
Q 05Roughly how many delegates from 17 countries agreed to a Women's Day at the 1910 conference?
100
They backed the day as a way to promote equal rights, including women's suffrage, but left the calendar date open.
Q 06In what year was the first International Women's Day marked, with over a million taking part?
1911
Austria-Hungary alone saw 300 demonstrations, with women parading along Vienna's Ringstrasse.
Q 07The Petrograd women textile workers' demonstration of 8 March 1917 began which event?
February Revolution
The date was 23 February on the Julian calendar Russia still used, which is why the two names for the same event look a fortnight apart.
Q 08What two-word slogan did the Petrograd women textile workers raise when they walked out on 8 March 1917?
Bread and Peace
The demands were an end to World War I, to food shortages and to Tsarism; Trotsky later admitted nobody had imagined Women's Day would start the revolution.
Q 09How long after the Petrograd women's demonstration of 8 March 1917 began did Tsar Nicholas II abdicate?
Seven days
The provisional government that followed granted Russian women the right to vote.
Q 10In which country did International Women's Day first fall on 8 March, in 1914?
Germany
That year's observance there was dedicated to the vote, which women in that country did not win until 1918.
Q 11Which leader declared 8 March International Women's Day in 1922?
Vladimir Lenin
For decades afterwards the day was celebrated mainly in communist countries before second-wave feminists took it up in the late 1960s.
Q 12Which country's delegation proposed a single worldwide date for Women's Day at the 1921 Communist Women's conference?
Bulgaria
A Russian representative then proposed 8 March in memory of the Petrograd women, and the vote was unanimous.
Q 13When the newly founded People's Republic made 8 March an official holiday in 1949, what were women given?
A half-day off
Communists there had observed the day since 1922, and a 1927 march in Guangzhou drew 25,000 women and male supporters.
Q 21A Tehran women's march on 8 March 1979 became six days of protest against what?
Mandatory hijab
The protests won a temporary retraction of the decree, but veiling was enforced on all women once conservatives secured sole control.
Q 22Stalin's 1927 Hujum campaign against female veiling and seclusion targeted which region?
Central Asia
The word means 'storming' or 'assault' in Turkic languages, borrowed from Arabic.
Q 23Australia's first International Women's Day rally, in 1928, was held in the Domain of which city?
Sydney
Organized by the Communist Party's Militant Women's Group, it demanded equal pay for equal work and eight-hour days for female shop clerks.
Q 14In which year did the Supreme Soviet make 8 March a non-working public holiday in the USSR?
1965
The decree cited Soviet women's achievements in building communism and defending the motherland during the Great Patriotic War.
Q 15The UN first celebrated the day in 1975, which it had proclaimed as what?
International Women's Year
Two years later the General Assembly invited member states to proclaim a UN Day for Women's Rights and International Peace, and each year's observance now carries a theme.
Q 16Which yellow flower is given to women on International Women's Day in Italy and Russia?
Mimosa
The plant is actually an Australian native, Acacia dealbata or silver wattle, that blooms in late winter just in time for 8 March.
Q 17Which three colours did the Women's Social and Political Union adopt in 1908?
Purple, white and green
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence chose them: royal blood, purity in private and public life, and hope as the emblem of spring.
Q 18International Men's Day, often mentioned alongside Women's Day, is observed annually on which date?
19 November
Jerome Teelucksingh revived the event in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 and picked the date to honour his father's birthday.
Q 19Which country observes Women's History Month in October rather than March?
Canada
October was chosen to coincide with Persons Day on 18 October, the anniversary of the 1929 court ruling that women were legally 'persons'.
Q 20What denomination coin did Australia issue for International Women's Day's centenary in 2011?
20 cents
The coin reads 'CELEBRATING 100 YEARS' twelve times over; the Australian Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry launched the same day.
Q 24The proposer of the 1910 Women's Day resolution edited which German socialist newspaper for women for 25 years?
Die Gleichheit
The title means 'Equality'; its editor later sat in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933 and was a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg.
Q 25Anahita Ratebzad's 8 March 1965 march in Kabul was the first International Women's Day observance where?
Afghanistan
Nearly half a century later, on the same day in 2012, Kabul opened its first internet cafe for women.
Q 26Which country was the first to grant all women the vote in national elections, in 1893?
New Zealand
The campaign was led by Kate Sheppard, and the Electoral Bill received royal assent on 19 September 1893.
Q 27Swiss women gained the right to vote in federal elections after a referendum in which year?
1971
The last canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, only let women vote on local matters after a federal court decision in 1990.
Q 28The US Nineteenth Amendment went into effect after which state narrowly ratified it on 18 August 1920?
Tennessee
It passed the state House by 50 votes to 49, delivering the 36th ratification needed.
Q 29Who became the first woman in space when she flew a solo mission aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963?
Valentina Tereshkova
She orbited Earth 48 times, remains the only woman ever to fly a solo space mission, and used the call sign 'Chaika', meaning seagull.
Q 30Who became the world's first woman elected prime minister, in Ceylon in 1960?
Sirimavo Bandaranaike
She held the office three separate times and in 1976 became the first woman to chair the Non-Aligned Movement.