Until recently, March 8 in Ukraine was associated with tulips and spring. Today, more and more women agree that International Women’s Day is an opportunity to declare equality. There are disputes in Ukrainian society about March 8: some still celebrate the “Day of Spring and Beauty”, others celebrate the Day of Struggle for Women’s Rights, but more and more people are talking about the Soviet origin of this holiday.
During the full-scale russian invasion, the debate surrounding March 8 intensified. On February 13, 2023, a draft law was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada for consideration, proposing to cancel March 8, May 1, and May 9, and instead introduce three new holidays:
– February 25 “Ukrainian Woman’s Day” (the date of birth of the most famous Ukrainian writer and social activist – Lesia Ukrainka);
– March 9 – Taras Shevchenko’s birthday;
– the second Sunday of May is “Mother’s Day”.
In 2023, Ukrainians voted in “Diya” to cancel or preserve the day off on March 8. The majority voted “for” the day off, and the Council promised to take these data into account before adopting the draft law on the cancellation of the holiday.
In general, there are four ideas in society: to leave March 8 as a public holiday and a day off, to make March 8 a working day, to cancel the celebration of this day altogether and/or to move “Women’s Day” to another date.
War prompts a rethinking of values and holidays.
Everyone has the right to choose whether to celebrate or not, and if so, what exactly – the Day of the struggle for equal rights, spring, women… But celebrating and receiving congratulations are different things. Of course, the reason for congratulation, the words spoken – everything may not be about you at all. Don’t underestimate the importance of showing consideration for any reason, especially in our stormy times of stress, uncertainty, and exhaustion.
Let’s just be glad we all made it to March 8! Every day during the war is a reason to enjoy life.
This year the senior teachers of the Department of Foreign Languages Viktoriia Lemeshchenko-Lagoda and Iryna Kryvonos invited students to take part in an English-language project work in order to congratulate women with the International Women’s Day remotely. Students had the opportunity to show their creative imagination and create greeting posters in English for TSATU teachers and students.
The students of the Faculty of Agrotechnology and Ecology and Faculty of Economy and Business took an active part in such unusual activity during their preparatory period 1 of the term (ПK1) and practice period. Their posters – postcards with wishes of love, tenderness, warmth, understanding, kindness, beauty, joy, and flowers are presented here.
The most sincere congratulations, of course, were from male students (Danil Mazanko (31HRB), Eldar Udovitskiy (31FT), Valerii Prokopenko (31 FT), Andriy Kolomoiets (41FT) and the female students were very active too (Anastasiia Vlasenko (31 GZ); Kateryna Horlova (41 GZ), Danylo Kushnir (31 GZ); Yulia Klymenko, Olga Markarova, Anastasia Kuzhel (31FT); Margaryta Koroshchenko, Tetiana Tsyntsovska (41OO)).
We are very grateful to all participants for their congratulations and warm, sincere wishes!
We invite everyone to join other projects of our department!
Senior teachers of the department “Foreign languages”
Iryna Kryvonos and Victoriia Lemeshchenko-Lagoda
