International Women’s Day 2023: Latinas Who Fought for Women and Civil Rights

March 8 is International Women's Day. It is not only a day of honoring and celebrating women. At the same time, it is also regarded as a season for commemorating both women's achievements and painful losses throughout history.

According to Esperanza United, March 8 has been branded as "8M" in Latin America. Women from this region celebrate this day by protesting and speaking up against gender inequality, injustice, and misogyny, picking up more momentum throughout the years.

Now that International Women's Day 2023 is approaching let us take a look at some of the Latinas who championed women's rights and welfare in the past few decades.

Dolores Huerta

Mexican American Dolores Huerta is a labor and civil rights activist starting in the 1950s. In 1962, she co-founded United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and Philip Vera Cruz to improve the working conditions of farmers. She led protests and pickets, as well as lobbied for legislation instrumental in protecting some of the most vulnerable sectors in our society, as noted by Google Arts & Culture. While in the world of politics, she advocated increasing women's representation in office through the Feminist Majority project.

Bianca Jagger

The world first knew Bianca Jagger when she married Mick Jagger in May 1971, but she proved that she was much more than the Nicaraguan wife of a rockstar. Bianca Jagger established her own name through her activism and charity works spanning three decades. According to her interview with High Profiles, she considers her 1981 visit to Colomoncagua, a UN refugee camp in Honduras, a turning point that started her passion for advocacies. At the time, she demanded at gunpoint that the refugees be released by a death squad from El Salvador and the Honduran army.

"These were extraordinary circumstances I was thrown into by fate. It was a privilege to be there and to be able to understand so much - to be there when people were about to be killed and our presence, because we were foreigners, [saved their lives]," Jagger said, saying it was an important lesson in her life.

Rigoberta Menchu

Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu Tum became a UN ambassador for the world's Indigenous peoples. In 1992, the same year the western countries celebrated Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America, she received a Nobel Peace Prize "for her struggle for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples." Her nomination was lobbied by Indigenous groups to highlight the fact that the European's discovery of America resulted in the "extermination and suppression of Indigenous populations."

Obviously, these are just a few of the many Latina women who have paved the way for significant changes throughout history. Up until now, many Latina women continue to break stereotypes in the male-dominated world.

As Latino Leaders Magazine pointed out, we may see more glass ceiling breakthroughs as women continue to change and write "herstory" in the years to come.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Beau West

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