In 2016, the weekend on March 8 will be lengthened - a four-day mini-vacation will be timed to coincide with the first spring public holiday, allowing you to fully celebrate International Women's Day.
Rescheduling the weekend to 8 March 2016
In 2016, International Women's Day will be celebrated on Tuesday - this is the day that falls on March 8th. In recent years, it is customary in Russia not to "break" the holidays. Therefore, if a public holiday is celebrated on Tuesday or Thursday, then the only working day separating it from the weekend also becomes a day of rest - Saturday or Sunday is not transferred to it. The schedule for the transfer of the weekend is approved by the Government of the Russian Federation annually.
This year, in accordance with the schedule for Monday, March 7, the day off has been postponed from January 3 (Sunday). Thus, we will rest on March 8 in 2016 for four days in a row - starting on Saturday (the fifth) and ending on Tuesday (the eighth). After that, the residents of the country will have a shortened - three-day - working week.
At the same time, the last Friday before the weekend on March 8 will be an ordinary, not a shortened working day - since it is not followed by a holiday in the calendar, but by an ordinary Saturday.
For organizations working on a six-day work week, as well as schoolchildren and students studying on Saturdays, the March vacation will be three days - from Sunday to Tuesday.
Rest days for March 8 - 2016
If we consider the March mini-vacation by day, the rest schedule for March 8 looks like this:
- Saturday, March 5 - day off (excluding those who work or study for six days);
- Sunday, March 6 is a regular day off;
- Monday, March 7 - an additional day off for everyone, postponed from January 3;
- Tuesday 8 March is a public holiday.
From the history of the holiday on March 8
They will have a rest on March 8 in 2016 in Russia for the 51st time: half a century ago, in 1966, International Women's Day in the USSR became non-working for the first time. And, despite the change in the political regime, it remains so to this day.
At that time, the holiday already had a long background: on March 8, events were counted since 1957. Then in New York took place the famous "march of empty pans" - a strike of women working in the light industry, brought to the limit by a working day at 16 o'clock for meager wages. By the way, the "march" turned out to be productive: after it, women began to work 10 hours a day. And in 1908, on the same day (and again in New York), another mass women's protest rally took place: more than 15 thousand women demanded equality: pay without a "discount" for gender, another reduction in the working day and granting the weaker sex the right to vote …
Two years later, at an international women's conference in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin came up with the idea of establishing an international women's day. It was assumed that on March 8, women of the world would organize mass actions, drawing public attention to their problems. This initiative was supported - and soon the eighth day of spring began to be celebrated in many countries of the world.
After the October Revolution of 1917, when in most countries women have ceased to be "second-class people", the day of March 8 continued to be celebrated mainly in socialist countries. Since 1975, it has been included in the UN calendar.
In the USSR, in the second half of the 20th century, March 8 eventually lost its politicization and ceased to be associated with the struggle for women's rights - and gradually turned into a "holiday for all women." At that time, Mother's Day was not celebrated separately in the country, Valentine's Day was not celebrated - and March 8 became an occasion to express love and gratitude to wives and mothers, girlfriends and colleagues. The first spring flowers - mimosa and tulips - became the unofficial symbols of the holiday. And one of the widespread traditions of the holiday is family "role-playing games": on this day, husbands and children tried to take over all the housework that a woman usually does, giving the hero of the occasion the opportunity to rest on March 8th.
