Topic: International Women's Day
How does India mark International Women's Day?
राष्ट्रीय महिला दिवस
- Local date
- February 13, 2027
February 13 is India's राष्ट्रीय महिला दिवस (National Women's Day), marking the birth of the poet and independence activist Sarojini Naidu (born February 13, 1879). Known as the Nightingale of India, or Bharat Kokila, she became the first woman governor of the United Provinces — today's Uttar Pradesh — after independence. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and others pay tribute each year. Note that this day commemorates a specific historical individual, which is a completely different lineage from March 8 and its origins in the international labour movement; conflating the two is the most common error when researching India.
अंतर्राष्ट्रीय महिला दिवस
- Local date
- March 8, 2027
India marks March 8 as अंतर्राष्ट्रीय महिला दिवस, led by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, with central and state award ceremonies and policy announcements, and a themed backgrounder published each year by the Press Information Bureau. It is not a public holiday. What makes India distinctive is that it has two women's days: the international one on March 8 and a national one on February 13. Among the seven places compared here, this "international day plus national day" structure occurs only in India.
What is this topic?
March 8 falls on the same day in all seven places compared here, and is treated completely differently by each legal system. China gives women a paid half-day, written into the State Council's holiday regulation. Taiwan lists it as a "festival" but its statute states plainly that it is not a day off. The United States does not use the single date at all, designating all of March as Women's History Month. Brazil is the odd one out: its national women's day sat on April 30 until a 2025 law moved it to March 8. What this page compares is not who values women more, but how far each system formally recognises the same date.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.